


Golden Vampire

by suchadearie



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-09-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 10:01:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 50,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchadearie/pseuds/suchadearie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mr. Gold is a vampire who has his fangs and his thirst for blood focused on a pretty little librarian. But what started as pure thirst turns into something else, and both, Gold and Belle, have to deal with the consequences.</p><p>No sparkly noble vampires in this one, I'm afraid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Every Tuesday, she closed the library at midnight. It was her instigation, her way of luring people into the library, people that otherwise wouldn’t look at a book if it slapped them in the face, but going there at night, sipping sparkly wine or fancy coffee gave the whole thing an air of being a bonvivant, and that was what attracted people. Of course, if she had known what else those “long nights of bookish love & excitement" - noble nights, as she called them - would lure out of the dark, she might have thought twice about it. It was a blessing for Rumford Gold she didn’t know.

Until now, he had only watched her from afar, followed the swing of her hips in her pretty summer dresses on her way home, inhaled her scent of sun and summer from afar and imagined to bury his teeth in the tender flesh of her groin and suck her blood until she came undone in a mixture of lust and death. It was exactly this image that convinced him to stay as far away from her as possible.

But every Tuesday night, he found himself staring at the library, watching people file in and out, cattle, not more than walking blood banks, and once or twice he stilled his thirst on one of them, sucked them dry and discarded their bodies like the wrapping paper of a hamburger. And the aftertaste they left had to be similar to the sawdusty aftertaste of a hamburger. None of them had the tiniest inkling that they were facing death when they met him, he was just some guy in a suit, with a cane and the odd habit of wearing sunglasses at night.

Then she came, reopened the library, smelling of light and soft breezes and flowers, and he wanted to taste her so badly, but at the same time wanted to preserve her, wrap himself in her scent till the end of time. It would be a pity to suck her dry in one go like just any other fast food meal. She was special. And his resolution to stay clear of her, let her live and just, from time to time, inhale her from afar, held until this very Tuesday night, when she locked the library and laughed with that huge guy, a sound like the purling of an enchanted fountain. Gold felt the instant urge to kill that guy, that creep that had a boner hidden in his pants that Gold could smell even in his hiding place in the shadows on the other side of the street. Oh yes, he was going to kill that guy.


	2. Creeping closer

It was disgusting, and he cursed himself for his weakness, but he followed the two of them, watched them walk hand in hand to her apartment complex. The huge guy even placed his arm around her shoulder, and Gold imagined to see the little librarian tense and shift away. For all he knew, that could be just his perception. It was dark – not that it made any difference for him, his eyesight was comparable to that of an owl, even with the sunglasses – but he was never sure if he did not just see what he wanted to see where she was involved. It was her scent that made him dizzy, the pulsing of her blood that thrummed in his ears and drowned out everything else. He was sure, if he had a beating heart, it would have beaten in the rhythm of her pulse.

She seemed completely unaware of the state her companion was in, and Gold was ready to jump in and tear that bulky head off, should the guy try anything with her, but, if nothing else, the guy at least had manners. He brought her to her apartment, first floor in a former mill, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, plastered herself all over him and kissed his cheek, and left him standing there, easy prey for Rumford. Just as he was about to move in on his prey, the creep did something that shocked even Rum, who had lived long enough to see about every perversion the human mind could come up with. And it wasn’t so much what the guy did – it was more the fact that he did it with her in mind. As soon as the door closed behind the little librarian, the creep took out his boner and started to jerk off on her doorstep. Puffing like a bull, propped against her doorframe, he was whacking off in a frantic rhythm. Rum lost his appetite. He was so disgusted he didn’t even want to kill the guy anymore, because that meant he would have to touch him. But he would not let this go without punishment either.

Just as the guy finished, squirting his cum all over her dark red door, Rumford stepped out of the shadows, tapping his cane on the ground for his prey to hear. The guy whirled around, his fist still closed around his cock, and Rumford didn’t give him much time to react. In one swift and precise movement, he pinned the bull to her door, holding him in place with the tip of his cane on his throat. He was much smaller and slighter build than his prey, but so much faster and stronger than a mere human. Before the bull knew what happened to him, he was squirming and choking at the end of Rumford’s cane.

“That was a very nasty thing to do”, Rum said, and he formed each word as sharp as a knife. His prey gave off a gurgling, coughing sound, but the cane on his throat prevented him from forming coherent speech. Rum considered to just choke the brute to death. “I think we both agree that this needs to be punished, don’t we?”

The guy flailed, tried to pull away the cane from his throat with his big paws, and his eyes widened in horror when he realized that he could move the cane just as much as he could move a house with his bare hands. It was always the same. They realized they were helpless, destined to die, and that was the moment most of them lost control over their bladder. Death was a reeking thing, and Rum detested the stench of piss. It was so much more pleasure to kill them without them noticing, with a kiss, on the highest point of pleasure, when they thought his embrace was a loving one. Or so fast they didn’t even know what was happening, slit their throat and feed on the blood spilling from it. But he wouldn’t grant the guy at the end of his cane the grace of a stenchless death.

Just when the guy was about to lose his conscience, Rum took the cane away. He waited, while his prey coughed and whimpered, and doubled over.

“What’s wrong with you, pervert?” The guy choked it out, and Rum was stunned at so much ignorance.

“You’re calling me a pervert? That’s…interesting.” Somehow he lacked a better word for it. He wondered what the little librarian saw in this rather defective specimen of human race. The wits of this one had clearly been outsourced. “What’s your name?”

“Why should I tell you?” The guy straightened himself slowly, and Rum saw that the bloke had already forgotten the strength of his assailant. Ah, well. One heavy blow with his cane reminded him of it. Under the force of it, the guy buckled and dropped to his knees, raising his hands in useless attempt of defending himself. “Gregory! It’s Gregory!”

“Well, Gregory. You know you did a disgusting thing there, don’t you?” Rum asked it with his most casual voice, one that didn’t betray his desire to beat the guy to pulp.

Gregory gulped, and Rum smelled the cold sweat on him. Finally he had caught up to his dire situation. “Yes”, he said, and his voice was shaking. Good.

“So I suggest you clean it up.”

“Yes, of course.” Gregory nodded, and he started to rub at the door with his sleeve, but Rum tapped his cane on the arm of his prey and stopped him.

“Tsk. Lick it up.”

The guy just stared at him, and Rum could almost hear his mind ticking. “What?”, he asked, and it was impressive how much like a little boy this big guy sounded.

“Lick. It. Up.” Rum weighed his cane in a way that said more than words what would happen if his prey would not comply. And he was almost disappointed that Gregory didn’t put up more of a fight. But for once in his life, the guy seemed to have understood that he had no other choice. However, the lack of fight made it only half as sweet to watch him lick up his own cum. Rum let him lick not only the door, but the doorstep, too, and the guy hesitated only a second before he bent down. Rum tried to enjoy the scraping sound Gregory’s tongue made on the concrete of her doorstep, but he was only repulsed. He didn’t plan on feeding on the guy, but he wanted to kill him nevertheless, even after humiliating him and reducing him to a whimpering pile of meat. But just when Rum moved to snap his neck, the door swung inwards and revealed the little librarian, standing there in a flimsy negligee and furry slippers that looked like pink bunnies, and with her came a waft of her scent that nearly made his synapses blow.

“What on earth is going on here?”, she asked, and for a moment Rum lost the ability to form words. He stared from her to the guy kneeling between them, and he remembered just in time to put his cane to the ground to appear less threatening.

“I’m sorry, Miss. I stumbled over this man here who seems to be in need of help.” He pointed the tip of his cane to Gregory, who looked as pale as if he really had been drained of blood. “He looked as if he was about to pass out on your doorstep.”

She furrowed her brows and looked down at the bloke. When she bit her lip in worry, Rum almost groaned with the desire to suck that lip into his mouth, bite her, and drink the blood from her lips.

“Greg, are you alright?” She bent down beside the bloke, and Rum had to look away, because her negligee clung to the curve of her breast and flooded his mind with images of him sucking and biting on her until he drowned in her blood, while she was begging for more.

The guy at his feet gave off a groan of pain, and it snapped Rum back to reality. He had to get away, before he really killed her. But she looked up at him, and her blue eyes pinned him in place.

“Could you help me bring him inside? I think he should lie down for a moment.”

Bad idea. Really, truly bad idea.

“Of course”, he said, and grabbed one of Greg’s arms to help him up and bring him inside.


	3. Dilemma

Rum still doubted the sanity of his offer to help her. And his doubts only increased when he was about to cross the threshold, supporting the guy – Greg, not that he deserved a name – by grasping him by the elbow. He made sure to dig his fingers like claws into Greg’s flesh, and the bloke winced in pain, but he clenched his jaws to stifle his groan. Good. Rum even arranged his clothing the moment her back was turned, though not very gentle, and he felt gracious for doing so. He had no worries that Greg would blab anything out to the little librarian. If he told her that the man with the cane had assaulted him, a guy almost twice as big and broad, she would only laugh. If he told her what he had done before he was assaulted…well, Rum doubted he would do anything of the sorts.

He hesitated only for a heartbeat before setting the first foot over the threshold. But she had invited him in, so nothing happened. He had to bite back a curse. She would have been so much safer from him if he was not able to enter her home. As it was, it was highly doubtful she’d make it through the night. But when he entered her home, her scent hit him with the force of a railway engine. It was everywhere. He stumbled, disoriented and dazed, and his vision was drenched in red.

“Are you alright?” Her voice penetrated the fog that clouded his mind, and he realized that she had grasped his arm to hold him up. Why did she have to be so reckless?

“Yes, I’m fine”, he mumbled, but she looked as if she didn’t believe him. “What’s your name?”, he asked, trying to distract her. If she looked hard enough, she’d see his fangs protruding, and he wanted to avoid that at all costs. His upper jaw ached as if he hadn’t fed for ages. No, as if he had never fed before. Her scent filled every hollow of his skull, and every nerve ending tingled with need. He was short of just dropping the guy at his arm and leap at her when she answered, and it was the sound of her voice that saved her.

“It’s Belle.”

“Belle. What a beautiful name.”

She creased her nose. “Yeah, never heard that one before. Just put Greg over there on the couch.”

Rum staggered when he directed the guy to the couch, and he would have tossed his load across the room, but that would likely have raised questions. As it was, he had to stay at Greg’s side, though right now, the stink of cum and sweat somehow dulled his urge to eat the girl. Nevertheless he was glad when he finally could take his hands of the reeking bloke. While Rum had dragged him to the couch, she had fetched a wet cloth and started now to pat Greg’s face with it.

“Thank you, Mr. …” she looked up at him, waiting for something, but Rum had no idea what it was. He had brought some distance between himself and the pile of stink on the couch, but that had brought back her scent, and with it the blood red fog that hazed his mind.

“So, are you not going to tell me your name?”

His name. She wanted his name. “Yes, of course. Forgive me. It’s Gold.”

“Well, what a shiny name.” She tilted her head, and a smile curved up the corner of her mouth. His eyes fixed on her pulse, a gentle throb at the side of her neck.

“Never heard that one before”, he said, and she giggled, a sound that bubbled through him like sparkling wine. And it was just as intoxicating.

“So, Mr. Gold. Are you the new neighbor?”

Greg saved Rum from answering by grunting in pain, and Belle patted – well, more like slapped, really – the wet cloth to his face.

“I wonder what’s wrong with him”, she said.

“Perhaps he upset his stomach.” Rum shrugged. He was more interested in finding a way to leave her apartment with her still alive, than in discussing health issues of a guy that would not see another day. The longer he stayed, the more he became intoxicated.

“Hm. Should I call a doctor, Greg?”

“No!” The guy sounded almost desperate, and then he squirmed and vomited on her feet. In her haste to avoid being hit by the contents of Greg’s stomach she fell backwards and landed on her bottom. Rum was on her side instantly, too fast for a man with a cane, he realized, but it had already happened. The moment he grasped her hand to help her up again, something jolted through his cold flesh, like a stroke of lightning, burning every fiber of his being.

“Why thank you”, she murmured, her eyes cast down, and by the rosy glow on her cheeks and the sudden change of the air around her, he could see that she had felt something, too. It was as if her pores were opening up to douse him in even more of her scent, like a venus flytrap attracted insects, and her warmth vaporized around her and condensed on his stone cold skin. He was paralyzed, and she had to pluck her arm out of his grip.

“I’m going to wash this off.” She pointed vaguely to her feet, to her bunny slippers covered in bile and half-digested fast food and – as Rum was painfully aware of – cum, and scurried off. The moment she was out of the room, Rum turned around and, with a flick of his wrist and a barely audible crack, snapped the neck of that insolent bloke. Only then did he realize that it had not been the best strategy to kill the guy in her apartment. He had to get rid of the body, and he was not in the mood to stage the plot of some idiotic movie. But she was already coming back, so he arranged Greg’s lolling head to create the impression that the bloke had just passed out, and contemplated about his next step. If he killed her, the dead guy on her couch wouldn’t be a problem.

The real dilemma, however, was his desperate need to feel that jolt of life again. And for that, he needed to keep her alive.


	4. There still are decent blokes

Something was strange, and Belle was not sure what it was. Greg had passed out on her couch, and Mr. Gold stood beside him, looking down at him with a deep frown on his face. He seemed to contemplate if he should prod Greg with the tip of his cane, as if to look if he was still alive, and there was so much distaste on his face that Belle shivered. Although obliging and even considerate – after all, she would have thought twice about it before helping a complete stranger in the middle of the night – something about him was definitely off. The sunglasses, for a start. Who on earth was wearing sunglasses at night?

She must have made a sound, because he looked up, and his face turned to her. There were deep lines etched around his nose, and she realized that there still had to be a pool of sick beside the couch. She needed to clean that.

“Is everything alright?” she asked, and felt rather silly.

“Yes. Your boyfriend passed out. I think it would be best to just leave him there till morning.”

Belle looked from Mr. Gold to Greg, who really seemed passed out for good. She wondered what was wrong with him. On their way home, he had been a bit nervous, yes, but otherwise well enough to tell her one dumb joke after another. She had smiled and acted as if she found him hilarious. In truth she doubted he even knew how to spell hilarious, much less what it meant.

“He’s not my boyfriend”, she said finally, because the silence stretched out like old gum on hot asphalt.

“Oh?” Mr. Gold seemed not interested in her relationship status, and Belle blushed. He acted weird, moving himself ever so slightly into her line of sight, blocking her view on Greg, and although his eyes were shaded by his sunglasses, she felt his stare on her as if he was touching her. And she was not sure if she wanted to think about him touching her, because when he had touched her, grabbing her hand to help her up, something inside her had shifted, and created something that could be attraction as well as revulsion. She was not entirely sure of it, and she had used her moment alone in the bathroom to close her eyes and count to ten, inhaling deep and measured and pressing her palms to her ribcage to feel it expand with each breath.

“So, what were you doing around here if you’re not the new neighbor?” She had not forgotten that he had dodged her question earlier.

“I was…taking a walk.”

Something was definitely off. “And what about the sunglasses?” She didn’t feel bad about being nosy, because after all, he was a stranger, he was in her apartment, and it was rather unlikely that Greg would decide to wake up and help her if she should be in need of help. Not that she ever needed someone to rescue her. She closed her fist tighter around the mace in her palm. She had taken it out of her purse on her way out of the bath, telling herself that it was better to be safe than sorry.

 “I have…a condition.” Belle understood that he didn’t want to elaborate, and if he had a problem with his health, it was ok if he didn’t want to share. But again the silence hung thick and impenetrable between them and prevented her from relaxing. Then his gaze dipped down from her face, and she realized with a start that it might have been a better choice to put on a bathrobe, covering the sheer negligee instead of grabbing the mace. She felt as if he was touching her, as if one of his fingertips was gliding down from her jaw, over her collarbone and to the tip of her breast, and heat rose in her cheeks when her nipple prickled under his stare. He looked up to her face, pressing his lips together as if in pain, and when he spoke, his voice sounded strained.

“I should be going. I’d say you let Greg rest, so he can clean up his…misfortune tomorrow in the morning. I guess he had a drink or two too much.”

She noticed a twitch on his jaw when he spoke Greg’s name, and she concluded that he must have an aversion to drinking. The idea of just leaving Greg on her couch though, without cleaning up, was rather revolting, but on the other hand, it was not her job to clean up for Greg at all.

Mr. Gold shrugged, and after one last look down at Greg, walked to the door, giving her a rather wide berth. He seemed to be eager to get out, and Belle was almost glad, because the tension in the room made it hard to breathe, and if he had waited any longer, she’d asked him to leave. She followed him to the door, if only to make sure he really left.

“Goodnight, Belle. It was nice to meet you.” He didn’t smile, and he didn’t look as if he was telling the truth, and Belle had a hard time to smile at him when she saw him off. And she regretted to have given him her first name, because it felt odd and wrong to let him call her Belle when she only knew his last name. She watched as he got swallowed by the darkness, and only when she was sure he was gone did she close her door. She decided to leave Greg where he was. The reek of his vomit kept her out of her living room, and she decided to leave that to Greg, too, out of pure spite. She switched off the light and went to bed, hoping against all odds that Greg and his puddle of sick would be gone in the morning. And they were, a miracle that almost restored her faith in humanity.

  


	5. Halloween

He had taken a chance by leaving the corpse with her, alone, and with a puddle of sick beside it. If she had decided to clean it up, if she had discovered that the guy on her couch was not just passed out, he would have killed her without a second guess. Even if it meant to never again feel the sensation her touch had caused him.

Of course he could always turn her. But his last attempt at turning someone had ended badly – and still caused problems, as it was – so he’d rather not do that. Especially since turning her into what he was would extinguish the spark of life that made her so irresistible. So, faced with choosing between killing her for good and get at least some satisfaction out of it, or killing her and create another problem, the choice was easy. Nevertheless he was glad that she chose to leave the cleaning and the corpse to him.

She had been much too close to bid him to leave. He had not only seen it in the slight tremors whispering over her skin, but also smelled it on her. Fear had its own aroma, sticky and sickening, and it had been all over her when she came back from the bathroom. It had been wise to leave, even if the thirst nearly killed him. And when he came to dispose of the stinking corpse, he had left her apartment without so much as glancing into any room other than the living room. He knew exactly where she slept, could hear the slow beat of her heart, her steady breath, interrupted by snores that sounded like the growling of a bear. But he didn’t want to expose himself to the temptation.

After that, he resolved once again to stay as far away from her as possible, though it was even harder now. He even dodged Tuesday nights for three weeks in a row. Then it became too much to bear, the craving to see her, to smell her again too painful to ignore it any longer.

On some point in his existence, he had stopped paying attention to dates, to measuring years and months and days in numbers, because it was irrelevant to him. Not so to humans, and sometimes it was even amusing to watch them celebrate a special day, one that would come again the next year, and the year after that, and everything would be the same as ever. But since he had not counted the days – other than counting how many days he had not seen the girl – he was a little surprised when he realized that the night he chose to meet her again was the night of Halloween. It was also Tuesday, and the library was open till midnight.

He entered the public building for the first time, and he instantly could make out her scent between the smell of books, coffee and the sweat of humans in costumes. There was at least one gorilla amongst them, as well as several of Frankenstein’s creature – none of the costumes fit the reality, but still, they tried – and more than one vampire. It was disgusting to see reality twisted into ridiculous fairytale characters and coated with sugar-sweet glorification. And seeing _her_ in a costume that seemed to picture one of Dracula’s brides made his insides burn with ire, and with the desire to rip her open with his teeth and show her his reality, turn her into a being that only lived for bloodlust, driven by the thirst and damned to exist in darkness and night. Instead he greeted her with as much reserve as he could muster.

“Belle. I didn’t know you were working at the library.”

She looked at him as if she had to remember first who he was, and it added wrath to ire that she should have forgotten him so easily. Then she smiled, with thin lips, showing off the fake fangs she was wearing. He answered her smile with a snarl – which she mistook for a smile, obviously – and for once he didn’t care that it showed his protruding fangs, aching in his desire to bite into her.

“Mr. Gold! We’re wearing matching costumes!” Now her smile was genuine. “Though yours hardly counts as a costume. But your teeth are really convincing.” She tilted her head, exposing the delicious spot where her pulse throbbed.

“Are you posing as a vampire?”

The smile left her face. “Well, I thought it’s pretty obvious.” She flapped the sides of her black cloak. Underneath it she wore a long nightgown, with delicate lace along the edges. “I’m posing as Lucy.”

“Ah.”

“You know. As in the novel.”

“Of course.” He searched for something else to say, anything to keep her talking and distract him. “So, how is your friend? Greg?”

“Oh, I haven’t heard from him. I hope he’s still ashamed for puking into my living room. At least he had the decency to clean it up.”

“Well, I highly doubt it.” The dead were usually free of shame. But he couldn’t tell her that. “Didn’t you call him?”

“No. Sometimes I wonder if there are not real vampires in this world.”

Rum froze and stared at her, still as stone. “And why is that?” he asked, though he could hardly talk at all. His mind raced, thinking about a way to get her out without anyone noticing.

“Not real vampires, of course. I’m rational enough to think it highly unlikely that there exists something like blood sucking monsters out there. Though, a romantic part of me finds the possibility of it intriguing. But I was talking about a different kind of vampire. Someone who lives on the attention he gets from others, who needs them to listen to him and sucks up their energy, drains them…Greg is someone like that, and I’m better off without him. But thanks again for helping.”

Rum relaxed a bit while she talked.

“So, may I offer you a cupcake, or a coffee? Or do you want to lend a book? Anything special?”

She rambled, and he wondered why. Maybe she was still nervous in his presence. Which was a wise thing to be, really. “A book. Is there anything you can recommend?”

“Maybe something with vampires? Since we’re both dressed up as vampires and it’s Halloween, it seems fitting, doesn’t it?”

“You appear quite obsessed with the subject, dear.” He followed her between the shelves, creasing his nose in distaste as they passed the gorilla.

“If you rather read something else…”

“I trust your recommendation.”

She stopped in front of a shelf that indicated “Mystery”, and stretched to pick something off the highest board.

“Fevre Dream”, she said. “Read this.”

“As you wish.” He had no inclination of reading anything, but he took the book from her and let his fingertips glide over the back of her hand in doing so. Just like the first time they had touched, something vivid and violent surged through him, blinding him for a moment with something that was almost ecstatic. The ache in his jaw grew almost unbearable, and he had to take a step back. When his vision cleared from the red mist clouding it, she looked somehow dazed. She had felt it, too, and his nostrils flared with the change in her scent, the smell of arousal coming from her sex and almost knocking him out. He had to go, and fast, before he took her life from her right there between the shelves, and made her beg for it while doing so.

“I…I have to check the book out.” She stammered, and he could tell that her reaction was disturbing her. He imagined the wetness between her legs as she walked in front of him, and it only increased his hunger, made him want to taste her blood mixed with her juices, and he staggered a bit when they reached the counter, and for a change his cane was not only a prop, but real support. It was hard to remember why he wanted her to live. The reason came back to him when their fingertips grazed against each other once again when she handed him the slip with the lending information. The spark of life. He had been dead for so long, and she was pure life, a flicker of light amidst an ocean of darkness. He needed her to be alive, needed to feel the spark again, and again. But somehow her expression had changed, her face betraying her and showing her suspicion. She liked neither him nor her reaction to him. Smart girl.

“Have a nice night, dear”, he said.

“It’s Miss French.”

“Taking back you name? Did I do something to offend you?”

She narrowed her eyes to slits. “Something tells me you’re not as harmless as you want to appear. So, yes, I’m taking back my name. It’s Miss French to you.”

“Pity. You know, if I really were dangerous, it wouldn’t be wise to let me know of your suspicions.”

She grew warmer, her anger radiating in waves of heat around her, and he sucked it in, inhaling it all to preserve it until he’d see her again. He felt his own cold flesh warm with her heat.

“Good night, Mr. Gold.”

He flashed his teeth at her one last time before he walked out, and resolved to be even more careful now. It would gain him nothing to scare her away. The book in his hand, heavy and bearing a faint trace of her smell, presented the perfect reason to come back. And next time, he would feed before he’d meet her, to get a hold of his hunger. Although he suspected he could drain the entire town and still crave for her.    


	6. Do the brave thing

Belle was not sure what was so repelling about Mr. Gold, or what made her react to him in the way she did. He seemed perfectly amiable, at least towards her. Nevertheless was she glad when he walked out of the library at Halloween, and glad she didn’t see him again until two weeks later. She tried to forget the shock his touch had caused her, however fleetingly it had been, and tried to rationalize the nausea that had come in its wake. One of the cupcakes must have gone bad. Or the juice she drank that day. Something like that. A touch, a grazing of skin, could not cause that kind of nausea.

But she decided to test it out the next time they would meet, by touching him. However, when he finally came back to give back the book he lent, he kept his distance at all times. It was another Tuesday night, and Belle had organized a reading with August W. Booth. There were more people than usually, most of them interested in meeting a real writer. Miss Blanchard was there with her class, and it was a bit chaotic, especially after the reading ended and the audience broke up, kids scurrying all over the place and some people desperately trying to get Booth’s attention to sign their books or maybe even have a coffee, sometime, in the future?

Mr. Gold hated it, that much she could tell after one short look at his face, half-hidden behind his sunglasses. The way he pressed his lips together and flared his nostrils told it all. He hated it, and Belle wondered why he was even there when he despised it so much.

He made his way to the counter, slow and careful not to bump into anyone, and placed the book on the countertop, nudging it towards her. She noticed the black kid gloves covering his skin. That made touching him more difficult than she had anticipated. She could hardly put her fingertips to his face. _Excuse me, Sir, I’d like to verify the theory that touching you causes me nausea_. No, that was not an option.

“Did you like it?” she asked, tapping her fingertips onto the book.

“No.”

“Oh…So, do you want to lend another one?”

He didn’t answer at once, and it made Belle even more nervous. Seriously, he should work on his people skills. “Perhaps something different this time”, he said finally, and Belle had to keep herself from rolling her eyes.

“Okay. Do you want to look for yourself?”

He looked at her as if he needed some time to decide, but then he nodded and turned away, walking as slow and careful as before. Mary Margaret sneaked up to the counter, and her eyes were fixed on Mr. Gold.

“Do you know who that is?” she whispered, and Belle knitted her brows.

“Um, yes. That’s Mr. Gold.”

“Exactly! That’s Mr. Gold!” Mary Margaret looked at her as if that should ring a bell. When Belle only stared at her, she sighed. “Have you seen Henry? I lost him. Again.”

“I’ll look for him. You stay with your class.” Belle left her place at the counter to look for Henry Mills. He loved fairytales, so she had an idea where to find him. But when she reached the kids section in the back of the library, she was shocked to find him talking with Mr. Gold. She was not even sure why this made cold shivers run down her spine, but she hurried to the boy and grasped his shoulders. Mr. Gold looked up from Henry to her, and a thin smile crept over his face.

“Henry! Miss Blanchard is looking for you! You can’t just sneak away…” She sounded breathless, and she was only too aware of Mr. Gold’s gaze on her, one of his eyebrows cocked in something that could be amusement.

“Mr. Gold was telling me about the Brothers Grimm. He said they didn’t write down only folktales, they made some of them up and only said they were folktales.”

“Did he? Well, it was very nice of him to teach you something. Now go back to Miss Blanchard.” Henry flashed another smile at Mr. Gold before he scampered off, leaving Belle alone with Mr. Gold. His gaze followed the boy, but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

“So, you’re interested in fairytales?” she asked, to get over the silence between them.

“Academically, yes.” He folded his hands over his cane, and Belle thought that it looked more like a weapon than like a walking aid. The thought was chilling, and she tore away her gaze from his hands.

“You need any help?” she asked, but she backed away, hoping he would decline. He looked at her, unwavering, and she wetted her lips with the tip of her tongue. When he didn’t answer at once, she turned away.

“Miss French.”

Crap. She had been so close to escaping. She turned back on her heels, slowly, and flinched when he was much closer than the moment ago. He raised a brow.

“Did I scare you?” He sounded amused.

“Did you do that on purpose?” She lifted her chin and straightened her spine, feeling every vertebra in the process.

“Maybe?”

“Why on earth would you do that? This is not ok. It’s not ok to be sneaky.”

He cocked his head, and Belle got the feeling that her words just dripped off of him, as if he was wearing a waxed coat. “I’m sorry. I fear my social skills are a bit rusty.”

“Or nonexistent.” She muttered it more to herself, but the feral grin on his face told her that he had heard her well enough.

“Or that, yes. So, could you point me to poetry, please?”

He only wanted directions. That was all. Belle knew she should feel relieved about it, but it only increased the feeling that something was amiss. Nevertheless she nodded and started to the poetry shelf. It was only one, and not very well organized, but poetry wasn’t the most enticing reading subject for people in town. She hardly ever checked out any poetry.

“I wouldn’t have taken you for a poetry type” she said while walking a few steps ahead of him.

“I’m sure I am many things you wouldn’t take me for.” The tapping of his cane stayed close behind her, even though she was walking fast. When she came to a halt in front of the poetry shelf, he nearly bumped into her, and she felt her hair move with his breath. She turned and backed against the shelf because he was so close. If she would brush his cheek with her nose now, she could pretend it was a coincidence and still check her theory. But when she leaned into him, he stepped back, avoiding her with much more grace than she expected from someone who needed a cane to walk. She stared at him, and his jaw twitched. Why did he look so…pained? She narrowed her eyes and eyed him, unblinking, somehow trying to stare him into the ground. He was the first to look away.

“Anything in particular you’re interested in?” she asked then, and he stepped to the shelf and let his fingertips glide over the spine of a book, slow and deliberate, and Belle imagined to feel his touch on her spine. She tried to shake it off.

“Les Fleur du Mal?” He sounded as if he was offering her a bait, waiting for her to take it. Well, she wouldn’t.

“That’s filed here, under B. Like Baudelaire.” She raised a brow and pointed it out, but she didn’t take it off the shelf for him. She had no intention of turning her back to him again. “We have an edition where the original poem is side by side with its translation, so you can compare…”

“I don’t need a translation, dear, thank you.”

He had interrupted her. And he had called her “dear”, again. “It’s Miss French”, she said, and her voice was flat. He watched her, and the tip of his tongue crept over his lips, before he chuckled and looked back to the books in front of him.

“Of course, Miss French. Forgive an old man his odd habits.” He grasped the book he wanted, and Belle needed to tear away her gaze from his hands in the black kid gloves. Even though he moved slow most of the time, and seemed gentle, something told her that these hands could snap a spine in a heartbeat. Mary Margaret seemed to know more about him. Perhaps she should interrogate her. She stood there for a moment, unmoving, until she realized he wanted her to lead the way.

“You first”, she said, and when she gestured for him to go ahead, he shrugged and did as she said. “So, you speak French?” she asked, and nearly bumped into him when he stopped again. Oh my, this was the most awkward dance she ever had attended.

“Yes.”

“You know, it’s really hard to talk to you when you only give one-word-answers.” She blushed as soon as it was out. She could only hope he didn’t take offense, though she didn’t know why she should care. It was not as if he would kill her for stepping on his toes.

“Do you even want to talk to me, Miss French?” He emphasized her name, and she felt her cheeks grow even hotter.

“I..it’s just small talk, I guess…But you don’t give me much that I can work with.” Now she sounded just silly.

“I see. Well, in case you wanted to talk to me, why don’t you join me for dinner some time?”

“I…what?” She stared at him, but his face was impassive, and she was not sure what had just happened. Had he invited her on a date?

“You’re allowed to say no, Miss French. You don’t have to do something you’re uncomfortable with, just to make an old man happy.”

“You know that this is emotional extortion.”

“Not at all. In fact, I already regret to have said anything at all. Please forgive me.” He bowed his head and started for the counter again.

“Wait.” Belle was not sure what made her call him back, and she was not at all sure that this was wise, but he had been nothing but polite, and maybe she could test her theory better in a more informal setting. “I will have dinner with you.”

He eyed her unsmiling, almost as if he wanted to make sure she really meant what she said. Belle realized that he waited for her to change her mind. He gave her a chance to back out. But she had made up her mind. She wanted to find out what it was about him that made her uncomfortable, and if it meant she had to face him to face her fear, so be it. When she didn’t take back her words, he seemed almost surprised.

“Well, then…Would tomorrow suit you?” he asked, and Belle felt a little pang of dread that it should be so soon. On the other hand, the sooner she got it over with, the better.

“Yes.”

“Then it’s a date.”

After that she finally checked out his book. He told her he would come to pick her up around eight, and she watched him as he walked out, his steps as measured as ever. It was only dinner. One evening. And if she changed her mind, she could still cancel their date. Only then did she realize that she didn’t have his number. But then, calling off their date wouldn’t be the brave thing to do. And above all, Belle wanted to be brave and act like a real grown-up.


	7. Dinner

How had that happened? Why had he taken it that far, why had he invited her to dinner? Rum stared at her, lost for words, and tried to understand the folly that had led to this.

“Everything alright?” she asked, and Rum remembered to put the cane down again, after he had knocked at her door with its golden handle, and she had opened and blinded him with her scent and her smile – shaking and fearful and oh so brave – and he faced the questions again, the questions that had tormented him since the moment he walked out of the library the night before. He wanted her to stay alive. He wanted her alive. He wanted her. He wanted her life. He wanted everything of her, so how could he put her into the peril of his presence? The closer he was to her, the closer she was to death.

“Everything’s fine. Ready for our dinner?” He hoped she would decline, hoped she would call it off, close the door into his face and tell him to stay forever outside, but she stepped out and closed the door behind her, and smiled at him again. But her lips were still trembling, and when he took her arm to guide her to his car, the cloying smell of fear was all over her.

“Belle, why are you doing this?” he asked just as they reached his Cadillac, forgetting again that she didn’t want him to use her name. But she deserved a name, she was the only one who deserved a name, and he couldn’t even say why.

She didn’t meet his gaze, and the tip of her tongue flitted over her lips, wetting them and making them even more seductive. “Why shouldn’t I?” she asked, and he could have told her more reasons than he cared to remember.

“I’m not a good person”, he said. His words quickened her pulse, and he could see her heart beating in her throat, but she smiled, and it wasn’t a forced smile.

“I don’t think that’s true. You helped Greg when he needed help. And you have been nothing but polite. Why would you think you’re not a good person?”

His teeth ached in his desire to show her, to press her against the car, take those lips and turn her into another reason why he wasn’t a good person. But he fought it down. He had never wanted to be good, and in his mind, there wasn’t even such a thing as good, so why bother? But he was mesmerized by the life pulsing in her veins, and perhaps it would suffice to just watch this life, watch her live until she turned to dust. “You’re very kind to have sympathy with an old and lonely man.”

She laughed. “How old are you, anyway? You constantly refer to yourself as old, but you don’t look that old. My dad looks older.”

“Well, I could be your father.” He could be her father’s grand-grandfather, if he could be anyone’s father, but he didn’t think it wise to mention that. He opened her the door of his car and she smiled again at him as she climbed in.

He had no idea how he survived the drive. Or she, for that matter. The small, enclosed space of the car forced him to breathe her in, and every breath became torture. He didn’t need to breathe, but he couldn’t have stopped if he wanted to. By the time they arrived at the small restaurant, he was sure that every fiber of his cold flesh was filled with her scent, and every fiber wanted her, wanted to be filled with her blood.

It had been cautionary of him to reserve a table in a restaurant, rather than invite her into his house. In case she would survive the drive with him, he wanted to keep himself from tearing into her over dinner, so he chose a public place. They had been silent while driving, and he was not even sure if he would have heard her over the thrumming of her blood if she had spoken. But once seated in his car, she remembered her fear, and he wondered again why she had agreed to this. When he helped her out of the car, her hand was trembling in his grip, and he was glad he still wore his gloves. Touching her bare skin, feeling the rush of life, would have broken his restraints, the threadbare grip he had on his hunger. But she smiled when he moved her chair so she could take a seat, and she smiled when he asked her if she wanted wine.

“So, have you ever had Tilapia?” she asked after studying the menu. He couldn’t say that he had, but then, he rarely ate anything. It was not that he couldn’t eat, it was just that it tasted ashen and had no merit for him.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Then you should try it. It’s delicious, and it goes very well with exotic fruit. Is it ok if I choose for you?” Her voice was a little breathless. And her heart was beating as fast as a rabbit heart. It was hard to tear his gaze from her chest, where it pumped her blood so fast and deafening, but he supposed that his stare could very well be misinterpreted.

“By all means. I’m yours.” It was a lie, of course, and she didn’t believe him for one second, that much he could read in the way she cocked her eyebrows.

Over the course of their meal it became obvious that she didn’t really want to be with him. They hardly talked, and even for him, the silence grew painful. He had never had difficulties at charming his prey before, but with her, it was different. He was conflicted.

“Please, Miss French, I don’t get over the impression that there are a thousand places you’d rather be, than here with me, so why are you doing this?”

She had dabbed the corner of her mouth with her napkin, but now she let it sink down, and clawed at the fabric. Her chest heaved with her breath, and he saw that she was working up the courage to tell him what was on her mind. “I…I have a theory that I want to test.”

“Ah. Are you going to tell me about your theory?”

Her face flushed, and when she looked up at him, her lips trembled. “It’s a silly thing, really. You know how you can feel uneasy with a person, and really dislike it when they come too close?”

“Yes, I imagine I do. But if you feel uneasy with me, why even agree to spend time with me?” She was either really brave or really stupid. Probably both.

“I don’t understand it. You seem to be a nice guy, your manners are impeccable, and yet your touch makes me feel upside down. I’m sorry, that doesn’t even make sense.” She looked down at the napkin in her hand.

“You know, normally when someone makes you feel this way, you shrug it off and just avoid the person.” He had already known he made her uncomfortable. He knew, too, that his touch had caused her to feel something else, and that this was probably the reason for her uneasiness.

“You’re right. I just…I want to find out what it is.”

“That could be very stupid. If I were a monster or a serial killer, your chances of surviving this little encounter would be very slim by now.”

She frowned at him, and a smile made the dimples on her cheeks appear. “There are no monsters. But it’s not very nice to jest about those kind of things.”

She actually scolded him, and he was torn between shaking his head over her naivety and the urge to show her what kind of monster he was. “So, let me get this straight. You want to touch me to find out what exactly it is that repulses you about me?”

She blushed, and her growing warmth assaulted him and nearly drowned him. “If you put it that way, it sounds even more silly.”

“I’m not sure if I should be insulted, hurt, or satisfied over the effect I have on you.”

“Oh my. I didn’t mean to insult you!” Her eyes flew up to his face, and she looked mortified, the blush on her cheeks washed away.

“You really are quite naïve. But there’s no need to look so aghast, dear. You didn’t insult me.” In fact, it pleased him that she acknowledged the effect he had on her. It made him want to find out what else he was able to elicit from her. He imagined sweet moans of pleasure coming from her lips as he sucked the blood from the pulsing spot at the crook of her neck and buried his cock in her. The image was disturbing. It was not that he wasn’t able to function sexually – because he was – but it rarely happened that he thought about putting his ability to use.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.” She worried her bottom lip, and Rum fought the desire to make her show him how sorry she was by putting those lips to good use. He beckoned their waiter and asked for the check. Only then did he look back at her, hoping that the strange need he felt would have passed by then.

“It takes courage to be this honest. Are you still interested in testing out your theory?”

She swallowed, and her voice was hoarse and throaty and sounded just as a lover’s plea to him. “Yes.”

It was only one word, plain and simple, but it almost broke the hold he had on his hunger. He rose, stepping to her chair to help her up like a gentleman, only she didn’t wear her coat anymore and his hands were bare, and when he took her hand and their skin touched, the bolt of life surging through him melted him into burning need. He watched her, took in the flare of her nostrils and her dilating pupils, and in a fit of madness he lifted her hand up and turned it and pressed his lips to her inner wrist. Having her pulse so close to his jaws was torture, and his skull and fangs were aching in his desire to bite into her, taste her. He even sucked in a bit of her skin, and the breath hitched in her throat and she leaned closer, only a tiny sway of her torso. He smelled her, smelled the scent of arousal coming from her, even noticed how she pressed her thighs together and clenched her teeth to hold back the tiny moan. He let go of her wrist, not without observing the damp spot he had left on her skin.

“So, did your theory prove to be true?” he asked, helping her up. He was not sure if the grip of his other hand on the handle of his cane didn’t bend the metal in his struggle to keep himself under control. She rose, and she was much too close, so close he almost felt her shiver vibrating on his own skin.

“I’m not entirely sure” she said, and it was not more than a whisper. He stepped back.

“Shall I call you a cab for your drive home?” he asked, and she tilted her head and creased her forehead. He could tell that she was actually considering his offer, and he was not sure if he was glad or horrified when she shook her head.

“No.”

“Still testing your theory?” Her bravery bordered to stupidity. And his hunger for her bordered to insanity. They walked out side by side, and when she was once more seated in his car, he closed his eyes for a moment. Keeping her alive was so much harder with craving and need searing in his veins. And it didn’t help that she herself was fighting her arousal. Her dress was only a thin barricade, a thin layer of fabric that couldn’t keep her scent from reaching his senses. Her muscles warmed with the convulsions running through her core, and she was as tense as a hare about to bolt. Like prey. He had no idea how he managed to reach her apartment complex with her in this state at his side, and with him in an even more dire state. He had no idea how he managed to deliver her to her doorstep without taking her –and her life – at least twice on the short walk from his car to her apartment. He wanted to say goodbye and leave her and find another victim to bury his teeth in, even if it wouldn’t be half as sating as taking her. But when they reached her door, she took his hand in hers before he could say anything.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be hurtful. It’s just that I never experienced this before, and it still confuses me.” She stared down at their clasped hands, and he felt her tremble again.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never met someone and reacted other than with my brain. Most people are easy to figure out. And it scares me that I react to you on another level.”

“You should listen to whatever tells you to stay away from me.” The words almost killed him, because all he wanted to do right now was to press her against the wall and fuck and kill her at the same time. She looked up, her gaze meeting his, and her eyes pinned him in place.

“I don’t believe you are as dark as you want me to believe you are. You’re just bad at socializing.”

He would have laughed, but she raised herself on tiptoes and pressed her lips to his, and for a moment his whole existence froze.

   


	8. Little Death

She tore her lips away after a few seconds – that seemed to last for centuries – and creased her forehead. Rum tried to control the tremors running through him. Her kiss had felt like an explosion, like catching fire and freezing to death at the same time.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, and his voice was so hoarse that he felt stupid. His voice was never hoarse. “Still trying to find out how you feel about me?”

She bit her lips, and he wanted to take them back and do that for her. “Yes…basically.”

“And?” If she knew how much it cost him to stand still, to keep himself from doing something irreversible, she would run. Not that it would save her.

“I’m not sure. It’s confusing.” She didn’t meet his eyes, so he touched her chin with his fingertips and made her look at him. He needed her to look at him, needed to remember what it was that made her so valuable to him. The contact with her skin made his fingertips tingle.

“I agree to that. It’s confusing for me, too.” Of course his reasons were completely different from hers. There was a speculating look in her eyes, one he didn’t like. Mistrust was never good in the people he was dealing with. If she found out about him, there were only few possibilities how to keep his existence safe. Kill her, for one. Though he disliked this option more and more, although his craving for her blood didn’t get any less. More the opposite. But somehow he disliked the other option even more: take her and keep her locked up. His to touch, his to feed from. His to take. But he suspected that her life would dwindle in captivity. It had to. So there was only one option left. He couldn’t kill her, he couldn’t take her, so he had to take away himself. The idea of doing that, of never seeing her again, breathe in her scent, feel life pulsating through her and feel it in their touch, felt like deciding to kill himself instead of her. He wanted to taste her at least once before leaving her. So, instead of stepping back, he bent down his head and pressed his lips to hers, taking her mouth once again. And she answered him, didn’t draw back but laced her fingers into his hair and pulled him closer. She tasted like he imagined candied violets to taste, and he couldn’t stop, not even when his fangs elongated and prickled in his desire to bite her.

She fumbled at the doorknob in her back, and pulled him inside without letting go of him. This was bad. His restraints crumbled with the kiss, with her lips and her tongue and the heat and wetness and the scent she emanated. He broke free of her lips when they stumbled against the wall in her dark hallway, and he had her pinned there with his body, his hands buried in her hair without him knowing how they had gotten there.

“Tell me to leave”, he rasped, and he knew that this was his last straw. If she didn’t send him away, there was no going back. He wouldn’t ask her again.

“No.” Her jaw was set in a stubborn line, and her eyes gleamed with determinism. He groaned, and his fist closed in her hair and pulled her head back, exposing her throat. He licked over the exposed flesh, over the spot where her pulse throbbed, fast like the heart of a tiny bird, and he tasted the salt on her skin. She tasted like heaven, like life, like death, and he sucked in the skin just above her pulse until she moaned in a mixture of pain and pleasure. Her nails scraped over his scalp, reminding him to let her live just to feel again the shivers she elicited on his skin. Then she grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled his head back, and even though it was dark in the hallway, he was sure she would see his fangs glint in the dark. Her heart skipped a beat and her breath hitched in her throat, and he heard it all, although the rush of her blood was as deafening as the Niagara Falls.

“It feels so strange. Every touch turns my stomach upside down and fills me with something dreadful, but at the same time I don’t want it to stop. Ever. What is this?” She sounded tiny, wondering, helpless, and it took him by surprise. He had not expected to feel…this. Feel the need to protect her, rescue her from the dreadful things he was about to inflict on her. He crushed it with his desire to fill her with his cock and drain her at the same time.

“It’s lust, dear. Plain and simple.”

She frowned at his words. “And do you feel this way, too?”

“Yes.” It was more a hiss than a word. The frown didn’t leave her face, and contrary to his former resolution, he asked again. “Do you want me to stop?” Not that he could if she asked him to. But it would reassure her, if she felt like having control.

“No.” But she pushed him away, gently, and took his hand in hers. His flesh warmed with her heat, gave him the semblance of being alive himself. She pulled him with her, and only then did he understand that she led him into her bedroom.

She wanted him to fuck her.

The realization sent a thrill through him, one that made him ting and tremble. And the idea of it was terrifying. She kicked her shoes away while walking and peeled herself out of her coat, letting go of his hand in the process. He could see tremors running over the skin of her neck, her shoulders tensing, and he wondered if this was still her experiment. Usually he wouldn’t care how she felt, wouldn’t care if she felt at all – after all, who cared about the feelings of a steak – but somehow this analogy had stopped working. A steak was dead, and his hunger for her and her blood had turned into hunger for her life, for her alive. So it was important that she enjoyed this experience.

They had reached her bedroom, and she stood still for a moment, looking down at her bed, her back to him, and he could smell more than arousal coming from her. There was a tinge of fear in it. Well, fear could have its own exciting effect, one that heightened the pleasure. He stepped closer and brushed her hair aside, baring the nape of her neck to kiss her there. She stood still, transfixed, as he shoved one of the straps of her dress over her shoulder.

“Why are you afraid?” he asked, when another shiver ran down her spine. She wanted to turn around to face him, but he grasped her shoulders and held her still. It was not a good idea to let her see his face now, not with his teeth so prominent in his hunger.

“I’m not afraid. It’s just…something is odd.”

He should not ask. He should stop this ridiculous talking and take her now, before anything could ruin it. His hunger increased in the same measure that his own arousal mounted. “What do you mean?”

Without wanting to, he held her tighter, and she gasped. He tried to relax his grip, tried to let go of her. He failed.

“You feel cold.” She sounded confused.

He relaxed, if only for a tiny fraction. “Well, my body temperature is quite low. It’s a side effect of my…condition.”

“So you want to do this, too?”

Was she really concerned that he was doing this against his will? He almost laughed, but it would have been a hollow and cold laugh. “Dear, right now there is nothing I want to do more than fuck you senseless.”

She flinched in his grip, and he realized that his words were rather blunt, not the best to seduce her. But her next words wiped his concerns away.

“Then do it”, she said, and her hoarse voice blew his fuses like a lightning stroke. He whirled her around and pushed her down onto the bed, and her fists clawed into his clothes and pulled him with her. He knew he was too rough, knew he was too close to losing the hold on his hunger completely, but he could not stop. She was tearing at his shirt and jacket, clawing him out of his clothes the way he was clawing her out of hers. Again and again he pressed brutal kisses to her lips and her throat and her collarbones, and he allowed his teeth to scrape her skin at the crook of her neck, drawing tiny drops of blood and licking them away. She tasted sweet, like fruit and wine and the clear water of an ice cold well springing from stone.

She kissed him back just as ferociously, and when she wriggled her hand into his pants and closed it around his erection, he almost came into her hand. He seized her wrist and pulled her hand away, pinning it over her head.

“Careful dear, or it will be over in a heartbeat.”

She giggled and rolled her hips to meet his, and a wave of her scent engulfed him. He could smell her wetness, the sweat that coated her skin, salty and delicious, and he wanted to lick all over her to taste her everywhere. He wanted to bite into every hollow, every curve of her body and suck her blood, wanted to drink from her upper arms, the swell of her breast, from her waist and right beneath her pelvic bones, wanted to drink from her inner thighs and her crotch, and it nearly killed him not to give in to it. Still pinning her down, he reached down to stroke her sex, to draw out the wetness and make her tremble with want. Her moans sent jolts of lust through his guts, and when he found her clit and circled it with his fingertips, she started begging. Her first _please_ nearly drove him over the edge, and he couldn’t tell which part of him needed to be buried inside her more urgently, his teeth or his cock.

She writhed beneath him, and he pinched her clit to make her buckle. He wanted to see her fight for her pleasure, wanted to see pleasure and pain melt into one on her face, and she gave him exactly what he wanted.

“Please, there are condoms on the nightstand. I can’t wait anymore…” Her words dissolved into a groan deep in her throat as he dipped his fingers into her to feel her silky inside.

“You will wait, dear. I want to enjoy this.”

“You bastard!”

He chuckled and relished in the mixture of fascination and repulsion on her face when he drew back his fingers and sucked them clean. Then he let go of her wrist and slid down her body, kissing and sucking on her skin, and scattering shallow bites on her that didn’t break her skin. Not yet.

When he reached her sex, he inhaled her scent deeply, drinking it in and rejoicing the shivers it sent down his spine. He blew a cool breath over her clit, and she shuddered and writhed beneath him.

“Oh god, please…” It was only a whisper, but she grabbed his hair and pressed him down, leaving no doubt that she liked what he was doing. She tensed briefly when he started to lick her folds and her clit, until she became used to it. He had to grab her hips to keep her still, and her panting became frantic and ragged. Her clit pulsed with blood, and the need to bite into it became almost unbearable. He moved his lips to the juncture of her thigh with her crotch and started sucking there, stroking her with his fingertips to make her come. She came with a cry when he pinched her clit again and pressed it between his fingertips, and he used the moment of her highest pleasure to sink his fangs into her crotch and suck her blood like a man dying of thirst. She didn’t even notice it, because he forced another orgasm on her with his fingers, and only when the spasms of the second one ebbed away did he stop drinking her blood. He almost didn’t manage to do so, and he was grateful for the dark that cloaked the blood dripping from his lips. With her life pulsing through his veins, the need to fuck her became even more pressing, and he reached for the condoms – not that he needed them to prevent a pregnancy or infect her with anything, since the only disease he carried needed the exchange of blood to be infectious, but if she wanted him to use them, he would do so. She moaned unwillingly when he placed his erection at her entrance, being more than spent and almost unable to move. He knew that the lust and blood loss had brought her into a state of dizziness and deep relaxation, and after two climaxes she almost couldn’t bear his touch anymore. But when he kissed her, not caring if she tasted her blood on him, she grabbed his ass and pulled him closer, pulled him inside. It took him only a few hard thrusts to spill himself, and he was shocked at the ecstasy that shook him, running through his body with a force he didn’t remember. He collapsed on her, and just for a moment he forgot that he was dead, he forgot the thirst and the urge to kill and only felt her warmth enveloping him, her sweet breath wafting over his shoulder and her hands caressing his back. He rolled to her side to relieve her from his weight, and for a while they lay side by side without touching, and he listened to her heartbeat, slow and languorous and mesmerizing.

“Are you alright?” he asked finally, and it took her a moment to answer.

“I think so, yes.” It sounded like a question, as if she was not really sure.

“Did I hurt you?” Maybe it was not clever to ask, but he wanted to make sure she was oblivious to his feeding on her blood.

“No. Not really. Though I feel kind of strange…” She trailed off.

“So, have you come to a conclusion?”

“As I said, it’s kind of strange. When we touch, it feels like…like dying. Like a brush with death, terrifying and exciting and intoxicating. A rush of adrenaline.” Her words came slow, as if she was groping around in her mind to find them.

“That bad, huh?”

“No. It’s not a bad feeling. Well, it is, but it’s also beautiful. I never felt this way before.”

So she was feeling the opposite of the things he felt. Where he felt her life, addictive and alluring, she felt his death, and it was just as intoxicating to her as it was to him. He raised himself to his elbow and bent down to kiss her, and the spark between them was still there, sending prickling heat down his spine. But when their tongues met, she gasped and backed away. He saw her lick over her lips and cursed silently.

“Where does the blood come from?”

“I bit my tongue.” The lie went smoothly over his lips, without hesitating, but she narrowed her eyes and tried to make out his face in the dark. He stroked over her temple, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, slipping his fingertips ever so slightly closer to her throat.

“You’re lying.”

“What makes you think so?” He caressed the hollow between her collarbones and the crook of her neck before slipping his fingers around her throat, gently and without applying pressure. Yet. Her eyes were huge in the dark, and he felt her pulse quicken under his fingertips. The smell of fear, dazing and overwhelming, reached his senses, and it made his fangs ache again. Fear always woke the hunter in him. He reacted with a snarl to the bloodlust that rushed through him, and the grimace bared his fangs to her stare. Her heart skipped a beat.

“Leave.” It was only a whisper, but it was as effective as if she had shouted it at the top of her lungs. He was barely able to grab his clothes on his way out, compelled to leave, and every second he spent longer in her flat hurt him like a thousand skewers hooked into his flesh and pulling him out. He collapsed on her doorstep, panting, and a wall of solid air kept him from entering her apartment again. She had put on a bathrobe and had followed him to the door, but she stayed inside, holding his cane as if she wanted to stab him with it.

“That’s impossible”, she whispered, and this time he allowed the hollow laugh to come out.

“I’m afraid not, dearie.” He started to put on his clothes, calmly, as if he found himself naked on a doorstep on a daily basis. She looked down her front, opening the bathrobe and covering her crotch with her palm. A bruise was forming where he had sucked her blood, and she was as white as a sheet.

“Did you feed on me?”

“Yes.”

“Did you intend to kill me?”

He hesitated. “No”, he said then, and he was almost sure that it was the truth this time.

“Do you intend to kill me now?”

He couldn’t answer this question, because he didn’t know the answer. When he kept silent, she pressed her lips together.

“Go. I don’t want to see you ever again.”

She tossed his cane outside and shut the door into his face. And for the first time in centuries, Rum suspected that he might have a heart after all. Because what else could cause the blackness in his chest?

      


	9. Pain

It must have been a dream. It had to be. The idea of vampires existing was just ridiculous. Belle was sure, if someone had told her that vampires existed, she would have put on her most polite façade and brought as much distance between herself and the nut job as possible. Which was kind of hard when she herself was the nut job. Right after closing the door behind him – into his face – she stumbled into the bathroom and into the shower, and she showered for almost one and a half hours. She did neither notice nor care that she ran out of warm water after 15 minutes. Her body went numb with the cold water thrumming down on her, and she welcomed the numbness. She didn’t want to think about it, about him, about anything. About her reaction to him.

She changed the sheets before she went back to bed. The old sheets had no visible stains, which was terrifying to her. She put them into a garbage bag and placed them in the hallway. She didn’t dare to go outside, not at night, when he still might be lurking in the dark. She was sure she wouldn’t be able to sleep, but as soon as she lay in bed, she began feeling heavy and tired, felt herself drift off, and only when she was almost asleep hit her the realization that her fatigue could be due to the blood loss he had inflicted. He had been drinking her blood. He had bitten her in her most vulnerable moment and fed on her blood.

She still felt terrible the next morning, and she took another shower to wash off the dreams that had haunted her, dreams of him in some theatrical black and white fashion, a vampire out of old movies, a ridiculous creature invented to represent the terrors of night, darkness and sickness. The bruise at her groin was proof that he was only too real. She took her razor and shaved her pubic area, wanted to see everything he had done to her. She felt even more naked afterwards, exposed and vulnerable, but strangely relieved. The bruise was still forming, only a faint shadow under her skin, with two grotesque puncture wounds. He had marked her, marked her most intimate part, and she pressed her fingertips to the bruise to feel the pain and recognize the reality of it. Then it hit her that he could have killed her, and she stumbled out of the shower and collapsed on the bathroom floor, naked and shivering. He could have killed her, and probably she would not even have noticed it. She had not noticed when he fed on her. She had not noticed when he had bitten her. She had not noticed, and he had drunken her blood and fucked her afterwards. All she had noticed was the sensation of his touches, the feeling of falling, of dying and being one with life at the same time. She pressed her fingers harder to the bruise when she remembered the sensation, to remind herself of the pain, to remind herself how very real her brush with death had been. This was nothing she could romanticize.

The very first thing she did when she was at the library was to check the time of sunset. It was November, and the days were terribly short. It meant she would have to close the library really early if she wanted to be home before dark.

“You look pale”, Mary Margaret said when she returned a book, and Belle swallowed a hollow laugh. “Didn’t your date go well?”

“I’m not sure. It’s complicated, I think.” She had told Mary Margaret about her date with Gold, to be on the safe side. So that someone knew with whom she had been last, if anything should happen to her. The thought made her almost laugh again.

“Well, I didn’t understand anyway why you accepted his invitation. He’s creepy.”

“He seemed nice enough.”

Mary Margaret raised a brow. Belle didn’t say it out loud, but she didn’t give a lot on Mary Margaret’s knowledge of human nature, because in the eyes of her friend, almost everyone over the age of ten was creepy. Mary Margaret was a mouse, and she was afraid of her own shadow if it crept up on her. Belle wondered if that was not wiser, at the end of the day. After all, her curiosity had landed her in bed with a vampire.

“Well, I only know the gossip, and most of it comes from Ruby anyway. He’s their landlord, and you better not let him wait for the rent.” Mary Margaret eyed Belle with something close to suspicion. “Are you going to see him again?” she asked.

“I hope not.” Belle decided to finish the conversation. It was too soon for her to discuss it, because she didn’t exactly know how she felt. Now and then, she became aware of the bruise at her groin, when it send faint jets of pain through her flesh, and strangely enough, every time it happened, she felt her inner muscles clench in something akin to pleasure. She didn’t like that. She didn’t want to let the thought of him stir her insides.

At home, she closed the blinds and locked the door before she undressed to inspect the bruise once again. It was darker now, more prominent. She wondered if the bite was infectious, if it would turn her into something like him. A vampire. The idea of it was horrifying. Even more horrifying was that there was nothing to ease her fear, no book, no manual that could answer her questions with reliable data on vampirism. There was only one she could ask, and she didn’t intend on letting him near her ever again. She tried to go to bed, but it was too early to sleep, and she tossed and turned, restless. Again and again she found herself pressing her fingers to the bruise to feel the pain, to feel the puncture wounds. It was there. She was not crazy.

She wondered how he had managed to bite her, suck her blood from such a tender spot, without her noticing anything. This angered her even more than the fact that he had fed from her at all. He had not asked her, and that made her feel used, like a meal. Like fast food. And with the mark he left on her, he had branded her as such.

Belle let her fingers slip from the bruise over her sex, gentle and tentative. She wanted to reclaim her body, wanted to feel as her own again, but when she circled her clit, let her finger dip between her folds, images of him flooded her mind, memories of his touch, the feeling of his skin on hers, overwhelming, sickening and breathtaking, and she increased the pressure on her clit to force him out of her mind. But when she came, she came with the image of him biting into her, sucking her blood and feeding on her, and contrary to the reality she had experienced, her fantasy let it appear intimate and erotic. She couldn’t hold back the tears, and she cried until she felt dried up and shriveled.

Over the next days, Belle watched the bruise on her groin closely, watched for signs of infection, but she didn’t experience any. She left her flat only by daylight. She was not entirely sure if this precaution was really necessary, and she felt more and more paranoid, and she told herself that even when she did see nothing of him, that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. She canceled Noble Nights two weeks in a row, because she was afraid to expose herself to the darkness. Finally she started hating herself for letting her fear devour her life and turn her into something she detested, meek and feeble. Even Mary Margaret had more strength, because underneath her fear, she had a spine of steel that kept her from crumbling and let her face each day anew. Belle was too close to stay forever in her apartment. Although even there, she couldn’t escape herself and the fantasies that haunted her. Maybe he had infected her after all, with something even worse than vampirism. But she kept her eyes tightly shut to this possibility.

“Hey beautiful!”

Belle lifted her eyes from the book on ancient mythology and watched Ruby stalking into the library. She was carrying a book between her fingers, as if it was poisonous and could bite her at any moment.

“I have to deliver this to you.” Ruby placed the book on the counter, and Belle recognized it instantly. _Les Fleurs du Mal_. When she didn’t take it, Ruby nudged it towards her.

“Don’t you wanna know who sent it?”

“I know who I lend it to. Your landlord.” Belle extended her hand, but she still hesitated to touch the book, afraid it might be, through some demonic magic, drenched in something of him, remembrances of his existence.

“Yeah. Creepy old Gold. He seems too afraid to bring it back himself. Are there charges he needs to pay?” Ruby leaned on the counter and flashed her teeth in a wolfish grin.

“I’ll send him an invoice.” Belle took the book, her breath held, and only when nothing happened did she dare to breathe again. Ruby smiled.

“We miss you, girl. You’re hiding away at home, and you miss all the fun. And you look sick.” Ruby tilted her head, and Belle felt once again ashamed for letting her fear rule her life. But she smiled, and let Ruby kiss her on the cheek.

Maybe he wasn’t lurking in the dark. Maybe he was not waiting for a chance to make the threat to his existence go away. Maybe everything was perfectly fine. There was only one way to find out, so she decided to close the library later that day and walk home after sunset. But she did it with the mace in her hand and barely breathing. She was not even sure if the mace would have any effect on a vampire, but it gave her at least an illusion of safety. Her steps were louder in the dark, followed by an echo, but when she looked back over her shoulder, there was nothing to be seen. She reached her apartment without meeting anyone. It was the same the next day, and the day after that, and she began to relax, began to wonder if she had not dreamt it all. The bruise on her groin had long faded away, and the puncture marks hadn’t even left scars. Oddly enough, Belle was disappointed by this. It seemed that his hold on her life – if he ever had any – dwindled as his mark on her faded, and when it was gone, he seemed to be only a memory out of a distant dream. Belle pushed back the fear, and she reinstated Noble Nights when December came.

She even went out a few times with Ruby and Mary Margaret, and she went on a date with a guy who seemed nice enough. But he was boring and one-dimensional, and nothing about him sparked her interest. She felt somehow detached from life, as if she was not able to feel alive if she didn’t feel death at the same time. She started to eat less. She started to wear heels that were much too high to be comfortable, to feel the pain with each step she took. The pain reminded her that she was still alive, and somehow she needed a constant reminder of that. She realized that this wasn’t healthy, but she seemed unable to stop.

“You need help, dear.” Mary Margaret watched her with her brows drawn together as she stalked through the library and sorted books away. “You know that there’s a psychiatrist, Dr. Hopper? Maybe you should talk to him. Something is eating you away.”

Her friend had started to drop by almost daily to bring her Christmas cookies, since her life appeared to consist of teaching and baking.

“Is it so obvious?” Belle asked, and Mary Margaret tilted her head and sighed.

“It is as if something poisoned you. You were once cheerful and funny. Now you’re only dark and brooding, and you read those terrible poems all the time.”

“Baudelaire is _not_ terrible. He celebrates the beauty of life in its decay. That’s very beautiful.”

Mary Margaret snorted. “Yes, nothing tells you more that you’re alive than a carrion does.”

Belle frowned. “Well, it speaks to me.”

“And this is why you should go to Dr. Hopper. There’s nothing wrong in needing help.”

“Well, if it makes you happy, I will get help. Not that I need it.” She waited for Mary Margaret to demand a promise, but she seemed content with Belle’s words. Which was good for Belle, because she had not specified what kind of help she would search out. And maybe, if she would talk about it, the folly of her idea would prevent her from actually doing what she intended to do.

When her friend had left, she looked up the address of Mr. Gold. Maybe she was crazy, maybe she had lost her mind, but she intended to confront him. He had done something to her that had changed her, had made something shift inside her, taken away the person she had been. And she wanted to go back to that person.

So, in the evening, after closing the library, she set out to find the house that was registered as his address. He had had a chance to kill her – probably more than once by now – so she trusted that he wouldn’t kill her now either. At least she hoped so.


	10. Release

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of self harm and blood in this chapter. (This is a vampire fic, so there has to be blood, right?)

When Rum opened the door to find his little librarian on the doorstep, his first impulse was to shut the door in her face and never again set a foot outside. She knew about him, knew what he was, and for weeks she had left her apartment only during the light of day. He had not watched her, had kept himself as far away from her as possible, but he hadn’t been able to resist interrogating Ruby when he collected the rent, among other things. Only a deep and sincere wish to die could bring Belle French to him.

“Are you insane?” he asked, and she flinched and looked quickly back to the street, as if estimating how much time she would need to get there. As if she had any chance of escaping after knocking at his door. She inhaled sharply and looked back at him, and there was a feverish gleam in her eyes.

“I never expected a vampire to live in a house just as any other ordinary person.”

He stepped back and opened the door a little wider, although he doubted she would come in. “I may be bound to live in eternal darkness, dearie, but I’m not bound to sleep in a coffin in a mausoleum.”

She bit her lip, and fidgeted with the buttons of her coat. Slowly, as if afraid he might leap at her at any moment, she stepped into his house. “Well, I expected something more…castle-like. Darker. Not something peach-colored.”

“It’s all about keeping up appearances.” He stared down at the doorknob in his grip and wondered if she would fall in a panic if he closed the door. “What are you doing here?”

She shifted from one foot to the other, and sucked in air, as if the movement had caused her sudden pain. For the first time he really looked at her, and noticed that she was thinner than when he last saw her. She looked haggard, pale, and even her scent was tinged with something yellowy. She smelled like overblown lilies, sickening and benumbing.

“I have some questions”, she said, without looking at him. Rum saw tremors whisper over her, signs of her fear that she couldn’t hide. He was at a loss, not sure how he should handle the situation. Should he step back and give her space? Should he step closer and try to reassure her with a soft touch of his hand on her arm? Neither possibility seemed like a good idea to him.

“Do you want to come in and sit down?” he asked, like a fool, since she was already in. She nodded, still not looking at him, but when he wanted to show her into his living room, she hesitated.

“Are you going to kill me?”

The question threw him off balance, and he pondered it for a moment, looking down at his cane, the prop that never left his hand.

“Probably not”, he said after a while, but he saw that his answer lacked the reassurance she needed, so he added, “You reek.” At this she flashed him a look that seemed equally embarrassed and offended. He felt compelled to explain. “You seem to be ill.”

“And you only kill the healthy?”

“Would you eat a piece of rotten meat?” His words only made it worse, and she was shaking in earnest now, her pupils dilating in fear. He wanted to take back his words, find better ones, but his mind was still stunned by her mere presence. Why was she there? “Perhaps we shouldn’t discuss my eating habits and concentrate on why you are here.” He pointed into the living room, and this time she followed his wink and entered the room. She staggered slightly, and again she sucked in air and paled even more. He was by her side in a heartbeat, and she winced when he took her arm to support her.

“Is something hurting you, dear?” He felt her pulse quicken, heard her heart beat as if it was about to explode, and he clenched his jaws to bite back the sadness. She would never trust him. And she never should. Her arm in his grip was shaking violently, and he led her to the couch and pushed her gently down, before he let go of her. He stood there only for a moment, looming over her, but he backed away as soon as she looked up at him. Even with the stench of illness all over her, he felt hunger gnawing at his insides, a tingling in his jaws that told him that he still wanted her, in sickness and in health.

“I’m ok”, she murmured, but she folded herself into a tight knot on his couch, almost like a pretzel, and rubbed her ankle, still staring at him, as if he was lurking there, snarling at her like a watchdog on a wrecking yard. He sat down into an armchair, tried to make himself appear as small as possible.

“So, there is something you want to know.”

She cast down her eyes. “Is it possible…Could you have infected me with something?” Her voice was thin like tissue paper.

“Like what?”

“Is it possible that I turn into…something like you?”

He laughed, hollow and without humor, and she flinched. “A vampire? Hardly. That only happens when I suck you dry and feed you my blood afterwards. Doesn’t always work.”

“Could you have infected me with something else?”

“So you do feel sick.”

She still didn’t look at him, but she nodded, a tiny movement of her chin. She had stopped rubbing her ankle and instead was fidgeting with the buttons of her coat again. He wondered how she would fight her nervousness if he stripped her of her clothes. He forced back the images of her naked body and concentrated on the clicking noise her nails made on the buttons.

“I feel like I can’t reach life. I can’t feel it anymore, it’s as if something is blocking me from it.” She spoke quietly, and as if she had to fish for every word in a big sea. “It’s like I’m locked into a room filled with cotton wool, and I have to scratch my way out of it and never find a door, only more cotton wool.”

“And you think this has to do with me?”

“It started after you bit me. So, yes, I think this has to do with you. You did something to me.” Now she looked at him, her face flushed. He could feel her anger radiating in waves of heat from her, and it hit him right beneath his ribs. She hated him. The realization turned his insides upside down, and he needed a moment to recognize the feeling, because he had not felt it for centuries. It hurt. He had not expected it to hurt.

“And this is why you are here? Why you don’t really care if I’ll kill you or not?”

“Why do you think I don’t care?”

“You wouldn’t be here if you did. Tell me, are you inflicting pain on yourself to feel something?”

She looked away, and licked her lips, and her fingers flexed around the seams of her coat.

“Why do you think that?” she asked, and he tilted his head, trying to make eye contact again. But she avoided his gaze.

“The shoes. The lines of pain on your face. Stop that.” His order jerked her upright, and her look on him dripped with so much loathing that his fingers itched to snap her neck, turn her face onto her back, just to stop the hatred from poisoning her.

“You are not entitled to give me orders”, she hissed, and every word was clipped and sharp.

“I can give you pain, if this is what you want. Make you feel again.”

Her chest heaved with her breath, and for a moment he envied her for the life she inhaled with every breath, the oxygen filling her cells and feeding her blood with life. How sad it was she didn’t feel that life, didn’t feel that she was brimming with vitality. Didn’t feel that every exhale brought her closer to death, took a tiny bit of her life away. He wanted her to feel life. Wanted her to feel alive.

“I want the pain to stop, not to feel more pain.”

“I can give you pleasure, too.”

“I don’t want anything from you.” She unfolded herself and stood up. “This was a mistake. You can’t help me.” She started for the door, but his voice froze her in place.

“Sit down. Please.”

Slowly, she turned on her heels, and again, she pressed her lips together and gritted her teeth in pain. “What if I don’t?”

“Then you just leave. I’m only offering my help here.”

She squinted her eyes, but she sank slowly back down onto the couch. “You don’t look like an altruist.”

A thin smile tugged at his lips. “I’m not.”

“Are you going to feed from me again?”

“Only if you ask me to.”

“You didn’t ask the last time.”

“I regret that.” It wasn’t even a lie. Not that he could have kept himself from biting her and drinking her blood, but he hadn’t given her a choice. Now he was facing the aftermath of the damage he had inflicted, and he was not sure if it was even possible to repair her. “May I sit at your side?” he asked, and pointed the tip of his cane to the couch.

She hesitated, but then she nodded, biting her lips and looking away. He moved slowly, trying not to startle her, but she trembled nevertheless when he sat down at her side.

“Let me take off your shoes?” He didn’t touch her, just held his hand suspended in the air above her knee, where the seams of her skirt ended. She looked at his hand and kneaded her knuckles, her hands folded in her lap.

“What for?” It was only a whisper, and he’d liked to shake the fear out of her. But he guessed that wasn’t the best way of gaining her trust.

“They’re hurting you.”

She shifted, turned towards him, and she nodded. “They’re a little small.”

Careful, as if approaching an animal, he touched her knee and let his palm glide down her calf. He closed his hand around her ankle and lifted her foot up to his lap, and she leaned a little backwards. She wore heels with thin leather straps that were digging deep into her skin, and her foot was slightly swollen. He wrinkled up his nose.

“There are so much more beautiful ways to feel pain, dear. Without damaging your health.” He opened the straps and pulled off the shoe, and she wanted to take away her foot. He held it in place with both his hands, and she hissed when he accidentally grazed a blister at her heel. It had already opened, soaked her tights and glued them to her skin with sticky liquid. “I’m going to take off your other shoe, and then I fear we have to take off your tights as well. That’s going to hurt.” He hoped that his explanation would ease her nerves, take away the fear that made her leg tremble in his grip, but when he lifted the other calf into his lap, the trembling only grew worse. She still didn’t look at him, and he touched a fingertip to her chin to lift it up and lock eyes with her. “I will not hurt you”, he said, and she swallowed. He let go of her chin and took off her other shoe. This foot was in exactly the same sorry state as the other one, and it pained him that she felt the need to do this to herself.

“When did you start this?”

“I don’t know. A while ago. When I felt like I couldn’t breathe anymore.”

“Did it help?”

“Sometimes.”

He let his fingers glide up her calves, and her breath hitched in her throat. It was a tiny sound that made him aware of the intimacy of their contact, and he stilled his hands in the hollows of her knees. “Help me with the tights?” he asked, and after a moment of hesitation, she lifted her buttocks from the couch, wriggled her hands beneath the hem of her skirt and started to shove them down. She fell back onto the couch with a quiet “umph”, and when she had the tights down to her knees, he took them over.

“Slow or fast, my dear?” he asked when he reached her heels, where the fabric was sticking to her blisters.

“Fast” she said, and held her breath when he pulled off the tights with one swift tug.

“Ok?” he asked then, still cradling her feet on his lap. She was panting, but she nodded and even flicked a smile at him. But she sobered her expression as soon as she noticed it. She didn’t want to smile at him, then. He placed her feet on the couch and rose to his feet.

“I’m going to fetch something to clean this”, he said. When he came back with a bowl of water and cloth, she sat upright again, her feet firmly planted on the floor. And when he placed the bowl at her feet and kneeled down, she started trembling again.

“Hand me the cane, dear?” He pointed his chin to his cane leaning against the armrest of the couch. When she wanted to give it to him, he shook his head. “Turn the handle. It should give a click.” She did as he said, and when the handle clicked and revealed the sharp blade hidden in the cane, she gasped. “Stab me with this if I do something to hurt you.”

She swallowed, and her eyes reflected the silver blade. “Will it kill you?”

“Most certainly.” His face twitched, and the words felt like pebbles on his tongue. But it was only fair to give her the power to kill him. Just as he had the power to kill her at any moment.

She pulled the blade out of the cane and examined it with her brows knitted together. “Where do I put it?” she asked.

“The pointy end goes right through the heart.” This made her look down at him.

“You have a heart?”

“It came as a surprise to me as well.”

He started washing her feet, and she watched him with the blade pointed at him. Her trembling had stopped, but the silence hung thick and heavy between them. It lasted as he was cleaning her feet, and after that as he dried them with the cloth. He sunk back onto his heels and looked at her, stroking her calves and allowing himself to breathe in her scent.

“Better?” he asked, and she curled her toes in his lap.

“I think…”

As he continued stroking her calves and ankles, her knees started to part, almost unnoticeable, and her breath quickened. He let his thumb glide over the tender spot of her inner thigh, just above the knee, and his fangs started to prickle.

“I think it’s time for you to leave, dear”, he said, and his voice felt thick in his throat. Her tongue flitted over her lips and left them shining wet.

“Does it hurt when…” She trailed off, but he knew what she meant.

“When I feed from you without masking the pain with pleasure? It does.” He had to press his tongue against his teeth to lessen the pain of his hunger. The blade in her grip quivered.

“Show me”, she whispered, and he was unable to hold back the groan in his throat. He bent down, kissing the spot where his thumb had been moments before, licking over her skin before he buried his fangs in her soft flesh. Her blood welled up and filled his mouth and his throat and threatened to drown him with the pure ecstasy of tasting her. She jerked when his fangs broke her skin, and panted, but she did nothing to hinder him feeding on her blood. He peered up at her face, distorted in pain, and when a breathless sob broke out of her, he tore his mouth away from her.

“Please, let me mask the pain for you!” He rubbed his thumb over the bite on her thigh, smearing the blood over it, and she winced and arched her back. The smell of her blood clouded his senses, dazed him, and his skull ached in his desire to suck her blood again.

“Yes, please.” It was a breathless whisper and her face contorted when he pressed his thumb into the bite. He stroked his blood-smeared hand up her thigh, and she spread her legs to give him better access to her core. When he wriggled his fingers into her panties, he met the slickness there, and only when he found her clit and teased it with bloody fingertips did he bent down again to feed on her blood. He licked and sucked at her thigh until she bucked her hips and pressed against his fingertips, and when he slipped two of his fingers inside her while teasing her clit with his thumb, she was taken by a sudden and violent climax. He stopped sucking her blood then and licked the wound clean, until the bleeding stopped, still teasing her core. She was shaking and groaning, and her hips twitched when he crooked his fingers inside her.

“That was better, wasn’t it?” he asked, and she nodded feebly. For a moment he worried he might have taken too much blood, but her heart rate was steady enough. When he stroked his thumb over her clit again, she jerked her hips and grabbed his shoulders. He could give her another climax, but she seemed torn between the pleasure of the last one and the over-sensation of too much touch.

“Shall I stop, sweetheart?” he asked, and was almost as shocked as she was at the pet name that had slipped over his lips. She stared at him with huge eyes, pale and trembling again, and grabbed his wrist to pull back his hand. He removed his fingers from her core, and backed away to give her space.

“I’m sorry.”

“This was a mistake.” She wanted to rise, but he leaned quickly forwards and grabbed her hands to keep her down.

“Wait, please. You have to drink and eat something. I won’t let you walk away in this condition.”

She looked down at their entwined hands in her lap, hers pale as white birds in his, smeared with her blood and her juices.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Tired. Sore. Queasy.”

“I’m sorry for that, too.”

She furrowed her brows and cocked her head. “You don’t need to be. I asked you for this. But we won’t repeat it.”

He let go of her hands and rose to his feet. “That’s probably a good idea.” He couldn’t keep himself from touching her cheek, and his fingers left a smear of blood on her skin. “Don’t come back to me again. The next time I might really kill you. Or keep you forever.” He started for the door, and this time it was her voice that held _him_ back.

“Where are you going?”

“Fetching you something to eat and to drink. My kitchen is not really equipped for feeding humans.”

She nodded, and he went out. He was only away for ten minutes, but when he came back, she was gone. Her scent lingered on, saturated his living room, but for the first time his house felt as smothering as a grave.


	11. Monsters in the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, fair warning: This chapter is heavy and possibly triggering, so if you're sensitive (TW: assault), you should probably stay away from this.

Somehow, deep inside, Belle felt better. She could not exactly pinpoint it, or say how, or why, but something had shifted again. She was still bruised and battered, on the inside as well as on the outside, and the cab driver that had picked her off the street after she left his house – somehow it even seemed impossible to think his name, let alone spell it out – wanted to drive her to the hospital because she was so pale and unsteady on her feet. She had declined, had bidden him to drive her home, and after a few grumpy objections, he had given in.

The cab driver even helped her inside – without her inviting him in, and crossing the threshold on his own – and helped her to her couch.

“Should I make you some tea, sister?” he asked, and his eyes glinted like shiny beetles in his bearded face.

Belle nodded, feeling too weak to talk, and Grumpy, as she named him in her head, opened her cupboards in search of some teabags. Of course he didn’t find any, since Belle only had loose tea, but he found that and brewed a tea so black and astringent that Belle was sure her tongue would stick to her gums for the rest of her life.

“So, what happened to you?” he asked, and sprawled onto her armchair.

“Nothing. I’m fine, really.” The tea had given her strength, and she managed to sit a little more upright.

“Yeah, sister, if you think you can tell me that nothing happened to you when I was the one to pick you off the street in the dead of the night, barefoot and pale as a ghost on a fucking graveyard, then there’s no helping you.”

She had forgotten her shoes. Belle stared down at her legs, and realized that the hem of her skirt had ridden up and revealed the bite mark on her thigh, just above the knee. She pulled her skirt down and pressed her knees together, and for a moment she felt the pain of the bruise forming there. It sent a tingle between her legs.

“I look bad, huh?” She didn’t meet his eyes.

“Like hell. You really shouldn’t walk the streets like that. There are creeps out there.” He took the cup she had placed on the coffee table and looked into it. “Another tea?”

“What’s your name?” she asked when he got up to refill the cup in the kitchen.

“Leroy.”

“Thank you Leroy.”

“No problem, sister. The broken and bruised should stick together.”

Did she really look that broken? But she felt better. Felt as if she owned her body again. She had taken it back by deciding to give it to him. It was hers to give, not his to take. The feeling of resentment and ire that had festered into a blain of hatred beneath her breastbone was gone, washed away by in the act of freeing herself and taking back her life. She felt empty, but it was a good emptiness.

Leroy brought her another tea, but he didn’t sit down again. “I should go, or they might manage to burn the house down.”

“Who’s they?”

“I share my flat with a bunch of idiots. They’re lost without me.” Belle envied him for the affection that shone through his voice. It made her feel lost and alone again.

“So you have a family. That’s nice for someone who’s bruised and broken.”

“Yeah, just up until that moment when they burn the house in their attempt to warm a soup.”

Belle giggled, and Leroy looked very pleased at that. “See”, he said, “good ol’ Leroy made you smile again.”

“You’re really nice for someone so grumpy.”

“Yeah, you better watch out there, sister. I don’t like it if I’m not taken for full.” But he smiled somewhere in the thicket of his scruffy beard, and Belle smiled back. After he was gone, she went to take a shower. Seeing her pale face reflected in the bathroom mirror shocked her, even more so since there was still a smudge of her blood on her cheek. Leroy hadn’t mentioned it with one syllable, but he must have seen it. There was even more blood on her thighs, and when she stepped into the shower and turned on the water, it swirled in red circles down the drain. She watched it, and tried to feel repulsed, or disgusted by herself for letting him do that to her.

At first, when his teeth broke her skin, the pain had been sharp and blazing, but when he had started to suck her blood, it had dulled to a dragging pain that grew stronger the longer he fed from her, and culminated in something almost unbearable that gave her climax a sharp edge.

It had to be wrong that she felt so…good.

After stumbling out of the shower, she examined the bite mark on her thigh, pressed her fingertips against it and closed her eyes to feel the sting of it. He was right, this was more beautiful than crippling her feet in shoes that were too small for her. He had been so gentle, caring, and watching him wash her feet, all the while knowing what he was, had lifted her fear on a whole new level. His calm outside concealed a monster, cold and merciless. She was not even a person to him. She was food.

Suddenly she remembered Greg. She had not heard of him, and although she was glad about that, it was strange. She decided to call him the next day. But Greg didn’t answer his phone, so she called his mom, only to learn that he was missing. Missing since the day she had last seen him. Since he had puked into her living room and passed out on her couch. Missing since the night she had so foolishly invited Mr. Gold into her apartment. Maybe she would have noticed, if she hadn’t been so caught up in her own problems, since it had been all over the papers.

She didn’t need to know what had happened to him. There was only one possible explanation, and it terrified her to think about it. Something had happened to Greg, and it had started on her doorstep. Her first impulse was to confront Gold and ask what he had done, but for once in her life, daylight prevented her from doing anything rash. And when night fell, she had reasoned herself out of her idea. After all, if Greg was gone, he was probably gone for good. Confronting Gold couldn’t bring him back, and would probably get her killed, too. And her hunger for life had come back. Facing the irreversibility of death, life became so much more precious. So she didn’t go out to confront Gold, but she was far too restless to stay at home.

She called Ruby. She wanted to go out, drown her sorrows, and Ruby knew how to have fun. And Ruby loved to have fun. Ruby’s definition of fun involved lots of alcohol and flirting, and for a while, Belle liked the benumbing feeling the drinks induced, and liked the appreciation she was met with. The guy who talked to her – Jarrett or Keith or whatever – was really into her eyes. At least he said that, but then, she was not sure he had even looked into her eyes. Just when she thought she would punch him if he repeated one more time how really pretty her eyes were, Ruby slipped back into the booth with them and frowned at Keith or Jarrett or whatever.

“Everything alright Belle? You don’t look that good.”

“She’s having a good time with me”, Keith or Jarrett said, and Ruby raised her brows. She was really good at this, and Belle envied her for her perfect eyebrows.

“Yeah, I wasn’t talking to you. Get lost.”

“Wow, no need to get all bitchy on me.” Keith or Jarrett slipped out of their booth, and he looked as if he’d been sitting next to dog excrements. “You can call off your watchdog, I know when I’m not wanted.” He stalked away, but Belle didn’t even care. His eyes might have been nice, but his manners were lacking.

“Thanks”, she said, and Ruby chuckled.

“Not your type, huh?”

“No.” She sighed. “I think I should go home. The night isn’t getting any better, and neither am I.”

“Shall I go with you?” Ruby looked worried, but Belle shook her head.

“No. There’s no need.” It was not that far to her apartment. She had her mace ready, and somehow it seemed trite to fear ordinary men when there were monsters lurking in the dark. But even though she was quite drunk, she noticed Keith and Jarrett watching her leave the bar, and she walked faster than she would have normally. And she almost made it.

“Hey, Belle!” He grabbed her arm from behind and whirled her around, but he instantly let go of her and stumbled backwards when she sprayed the mace into his face.

“Fuck, fuck, what was that for?” He groaned and covered his face with his hands.

“You attacked me, asshole!” She knew she should run, but she swayed slightly on her feet and was rather slow at thinking.

“No, I didn’t, you stupid cunt, I just wanted to give you your fucking scarf!” He was shouting and rubbing at his eyes, and coughing, and Belle stared at her scarf in his hand.

“I’m so sorry” she whispered, and he probably didn’t even hear her. She thought about just taking the scarf and getting the hell away, but what if she had really hurt him?

“You should be!” He still groaned and spit to the ground to get rid of the chemical. Belle extended her hand, wanted to help him somehow, and that was the moment he grabbed her again and hurled her against a wall, pressing his arm against her throat and cutting off her breath. “I make you fucking pay for this”, he snarled, and Belle struggled for air, fought the blackness, tearing at his arm and kicking at him. And all of a sudden, he was gone, and she stumbled to the ground, panting and sobbing. Her knees scraped on the asphalt, and little stones bored into her palms. She didn’t know what had happened, and all she could do was stare at the ground, at the splinters of stone and glass, being the only clear thing in her foggy vision.

“That was very nasty of you.” The voice was cold, making the small of her back convulse in fear. Gold.

He had wrenched Jarrett Keith away from her, had hurled him to the ground, and placed his foot on his throat. Keith was squirming like a fish out of water, flailing, but Gold seemed unimpressed. He leaned on his cane, staring down at his victim as if he was interested in his opinion on the best sort of tea biscuits.

“You attacked her because she thought you were attacking her? Not nice.” Gold leaned back, his shoe still firmly on Jarrett’s throat, and planted three heavy blows with his cane on the man on the ground, graceful, like a dancer, and with the force of a bull. Belle gasped. She was still trying to process what had happened, where he had come from. When the sound she had made reached him, he stilled his cane in midair, and looked at her. His eyes were like stone, cold and unrelenting, and a snarl revealed his fangs.

“Don’t kill him.” It was only a whisper, but he heard her.

“After what he just did to you?”

Belle didn’t want to think about that. Keith or Jarrett deserved a severe beating, but she didn’t want him to die. Not because of a scarf and a misunderstanding. She could not stand to look at the man on the ground, so she fixed her eyes on Gold instead.

“Why are you even here?”

Her question startled him, and he sat the cane back to the ground. Keith was still squirming, but he thought better than to provoke Gold by trying to attack him.

“Should I have let him continue?” He was calm. As if he was making a solid argument.

“Are you following me?”

“No.”

Little chips of stone were drilling into her knees, into her hands, but she felt unable to get up, to move. She just stared at him, and the silence stretched thick and deafening between them.

“How can you be here if you’re not following me?”

Jarrett Keith made a gurgling sound, and Gold leaned heavier on his throat. Keith’s face was more and more crimson, veins protruding as if he was short of bursting. He tried desperately to get rid of Gold’s foot.

“Someone called me when this scum here followed you out of a bar.” He didn’t look down, as if barely noticing the man beneath his shoe. As if Jarrett was not more than a snail, a worm wriggling its way through the mud.

“So you have someone watching me. How is that better?”

Belle sucked in a sharp breath when Gold stepped down from Keith and moved to her side. She expected him to grab her and haul her to her feet, but he only extended a hand, without touching her. She stared at his hand, the ring on his finger, without taking it. Her knees and palms seemed glued to the ground.

“I have no one watching you. It was just a call from someone who noticed that I take a special interest in your well being.”

“Ruby.” Belle’s mind started slowly to work again, and at least one piece of the puzzle slipped neatly into place. Ruby had brought his book back to the library. Ruby had seen Jarrett Keith leave the bar after her. Ruby called Gold. Why did Ruby call Gold? He squatted down beside her and tried to peek behind the curtain of her hair without touching her, and she was grateful for it.

“May I help you up?”

Belle looked from him to Keith, who scrambled to his feet, groaning, and stumbled away. Her scarf lay on the ground in a puddle, wet and torn. Just like her. Gold still waited for her to answer.

“Yes, please. I think I can’t move.”

He tucked his cane under one arm and slipped his hands around her upper arms, gently, and pulled her up. Her knees screeched in pain, and Belle was shaking. She held her breath, tried to still the tremors, but it only got worse. Gold didn’t let go of her arms at once. Instead he watched her, as if afraid she might just collapse again if he didn’t hold her up. He was probably right. Belle’s teeth were chattering, and a distant part of her brain told her that she was in shock.

“Let me help you home”, he said. Belle nodded. It seemed a lot safer having him at her side. And she didn’t need to let him inside her flat. He was supporting her with one hand beneath her elbow, and directed her to a corner where she detected his car.

“You drove here?”

“Did you expect me to fly? I assure you, a large part of the common conception of vampires is not more than romantic crap.” He opened the passenger door for her, and when she was seated, he leaned in and fastened her seatbelt. His hair tickled over her face when he retreated, and for a moment she closed her eyes and imagined to be coming from a picnic on a day of sunshine. Her trembling lessened a bit at the thought of warmth, chirping birds and the soft humming of bees. The illusion shattered when he shut the passenger door. She watched him round the hood of his Cadillac, but when he climbed on the driver seat, she looked away, out of her window and into the dark of the night.

It was only a short drive to her apartment, but every muscle in her body seemed to tense up in the short time she sat there in his car, and she doubted she would be able to walk to her door, or even climb out of the car again. When he opened the door of his car for her, and unfastened her seatbelt, she was not even able to tell him that she couldn’t move. She was frozen in place.

“Belle”, he said, taking her hands in his and squatting down beside the car. “I’m not going to hurt you, alright?”

She managed a tiny nod, and her teeth were chattering again. Carefully, as if she was fragile and would shatter at any moment, he placed her hands on his shoulders and took her knees to turn her, so he could lift her legs out of the car and pull her up on her feet. She clung to him, dug her nails into his suit, and for a moment he stood there with her, his palms holding her just beneath her ribcage, and she felt his breath on her neck, moving her hair as he sucked in air. As if he was drowning.

“Can you walk?” he asked, and when Belle nodded, her hair brushed against his jaw. He took a step back, but he supported her with his arm around her waist as they walked to her door. She fumbled with the keys, and everything seemed blurry, but finally she managed to open the door and step in. He didn’t cross the threshold, just stood there and watched her. She wouldn’t bid him inside, and they both knew it.

“Did you kill Greg?” In the safety of her hallway, she had turned around to face him. Gold cocked his head, and there was a twitch beneath his eyes. He didn’t answer immediately, and that already told her everything.

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Do you really want to know?”

Did she? She was not sure. She wasn’t even sure she could go back from the knowledge that he had killed someone. Someone she knew. She shoved the question back.

“Where?”

“In your apartment.”

The ground beneath her suddenly rocked back and forth, or maybe it was herself losing hold, and she stumbled, collided with a wall and sank slowly down. Gold just stood outside of her door and watched her, unmoving, and his eyes made her feel as if she was a tiny beetle about to get pronged on a needle and put on display.

“So he wasn’t just passed out”, she whispered. He had been dead. Killed in her living room. By a monster. She let her head sink back against the wall and closed her eyes. “And then…did you come back to get his body out of my apartment?”

“Yes.”

She had thought it had to be easier to listen to his cold admission if she didn’t look at him, if she only listened to his voice, let it hammer the truth into her, but if anything, it was only more painful this way. His voice sounded human, like the voice of an ordinary man. His voice didn’t betray the monster.

“And then, what did you do with him?”

“Belle.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and refused to look at him. “What did you do with him?”

“Belle, look at me.”

She felt her heart breaking when she finally opened her eyes again and fixed her gaze on him. He stood there, his hands folded over his cane, watching her as if he expected her to turn to dust before his very eyes. He looked sad.

“Ask me to come in.”

Belle supposed that this had to be the moment when she should see her life playing like a movie in front of her eyes, every second from her first memory until now, but all she saw was him.

“Come in”, she said, and he stepped over the threshold.

 


	12. Control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is dark and dirty and wrong on so many levels that I don't know if there is a way to rescue this. Warning: gore ahead.

The moment he stepped over the threshold, Belle decided to fight. He had killed Greg. He was probably about to kill her. And she had no intention of letting that happen. As he crouched down beside her, her eyes fell on the cane in his hand. This was the weapon she needed. She looked up, straight into his face.

“If you try to hurt me, I rescind your invitation.”

He raised his eyebrows, and smirked. “I’m not going to hurt you…much.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Then why let me in at all?” He tilted his head, and sucked in air, as if probing it for her scent.

“Because in here, I decide. This is my house.” She grabbed his shoulder to pull herself up, and for a moment he looked almost shocked. But he helped her up, and even allowed her to push him back against the opposite wall of the hallway. “And this is my body. I decide to whom I give it. I decide what happens with it.”

He licked his lips, and she saw his fangs flash in the dim light. “So what are you going to do with it?” he asked, and his voice was hoarse.

“You mean, am I going to give it to you?” She stepped closer, so close they almost touched, and he bared his teeth in a snarl. _Beautiful fangs_ , she thought. Deadly, but beautiful. “If you ask for it, maybe.”

“I’m a vampire, dear. I do not ask.”

She lifted her chin for a fraction, bringing her lips even closer to his. She could smell him, sweet and fresh, alluring, not at all like death. More like a poisonous flower. “Ask for it”, she said. He narrowed his eyes, and she could see thirst and confusion battle under the surface.

Thirst won.

“Please”, he rasped out, and she raised to tiptoes, pressed her lips to his. The moment their lips met, it all came back to Belle: The night she had kissed him for the first time, out of some strange curiosity, and the passion that had followed after that kiss. The hunger in her veins, the lust he had created with every touch. And the blood dripping from his lips, after he had fed from her.

She pressed her lips harder to his, felt his fangs graze her bottom lip, sharp like needles. She had felt so violated, used, reduced, and she wanted to take back what he had taken from her. She wanted to crush him, take back her life. But when his lips softened beneath hers, and he opened his mouth to let her in, let her suck his bottom lip in, and lick over it, she realized that there was more than anger flaring inside her. She buried her hands in his hair and pulled him closer, pressed her body to his. Yes, definitely more than anger. Her heart seemed to explode in her throat, and she tore herself away from him, backed away to the opposite wall. She needed control. Desperately needed it. He watched her, looking like a predator about to lunge at her.

“Why did you want to come in?”

He pushed himself away from the wall and crept closer, and Belle backed away along the hallway. “You were in shock. I wanted to help you…” He was staring at her lips, and when Belle licked over it, she tasted blood. She must have hurt her lip at his teeth.

“You’re lying.”

“Merely bending the truth. I helped you yesterday, remember?”

“You fed from me.” She pressed her knees together to feel the bruise there. _Don’t forget about that_ , she thought. _Don’t forget how dizzy it makes you_. Would her body bear another blood loss? She had no idea how much blood he took, or how often was too often. She felt fine, apart from the alcohol still fogging her mind and making her unsteady on her feet.

“You asked me to.” He had cornered her at the door to her bedroom. The cane was still in his hand, and he put it like a barrier between her and her escape route. She fumbled for the doorknob of her bedroom in her back, and pushed the door open. He watched her with a hungry snarl, and Belle had difficulties breathing. He made her feel dizzy just by looking at her with this hunger. She remembered the first time she had let him into her bedroom. His fangs weren’t so prominent then. But maybe he had just given up on hiding them.

“I don’t want to feel pain”, she said, backing into the room. She didn’t intend on turning her back to him.

“You will, eventually. But it will be nice pain. You’ll like it.”

She squared her shoulders and planted her feet firmly on the ground, hip wide apart. This was her home. She had control. “Undress.”

He didn’t comply at once. For a moment he just stared at her, wide eyed, as if wondering why he was even bothering with this play. Why he not just leaped at her and took what he wanted. Belle wondered herself, and was amazed when he discarded the jacket of his suit, followed by his waistcoat, and started to pull at the knot of his tie. He let it drop to the floor and started to open his shirt. All of a sudden, her gums were dry, as if she had eaten paper and swallowed sand. His shirt followed jacket and waistcoat to the floor, but then he paused, his hands on the closure of his belt.

“Take off your clothes.” He said it with a silky voice, one that vibrated deep in her belly and made her inner muscles clench. He knew how to use that voice, but Belle knew how to resist. She smiled, and raised her brow.

“My house, my rules, vampire. You go first.”

“You know I could kill you in a heartbeat, right?”

“Yes, but then I’d be just dead. And my blood would be cold, and clogging my veins.” Belle was not sure if it was clever to provoke him, or maybe even anger him, but right now, she didn’t care. She was angry herself, and she wanted him to feel it. “The rest of your clothes. Off with it.”

He snickered, and it was an ugly sound. But he did as she told him. When he was naked – and, oh, he took his time – she looked at him, took in his beauty, and his ugliness. His body was that of a predator, dreadful and dangerous, and Belle compared her own softness to it. When it came to strength or agility, she stood not a chance. He looked like an elder man on the outside when dressed, covering up his true nature with expensive suits and composed manners. Stripped of that, there was nothing left of his politeness, his civility. His mask slipped away and bared the monster underneath.

“Your turn, my sweet.”

She trembled when she stripped to her underwear, but it was not fear or shame that made her shiver. She would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit the excitement rushing through her. But recognizing his effect on her, and submitting to it, were two different things. And Belle had put reason over heart most of her life. She was rational. Rational enough to suspect that his effect on her was due to a chemical reaction. Pheromones probably, emitted from him to lure his prey to its undoing.

“All of it”, he rasped, when she stopped undressing. Only her panties and bra were left, and she hesitated. But then, she could just as well take it all off now. She was very conscious of her shaved pubic mound when she slipped the panties down. She had kept shaving it after the first time he fed from her, and it was the first time someone other than herself saw her this naked. The hunger on his face grew ravenous, and she was not sure if she still had control.

“Lie down”, she said, and even though he hesitated, he obeyed. He leaned the cane to her nightstand and lay down, never taking his eyes off her. He seemed slightly wary, and she imagined it must have to do with her demeanor. She wasn’t meek and feeble anymore. She was deciding now. She mounted the bed, kneeling at his side, and for a moment she didn’t know how to proceed. Should she just straddle him? He was fully erected, but she was not ready yet.

“Do you need directions, dear?” God, he sounded smug. The heat of anger seared inside her, and she grabbed his throat and bent down, bringing her face so close to his she could almost feel the stubble on his face scratching her skin. Did vampires need to shave?

“No, I don’t need directions. But another word from you, and I make you leave. And this time, it will be without your clothes.”

He grinned, and his teeth turned it into a terrible grimace. “And you think I care?”

Of course he was trying her. Bastard. She let go of his throat and grabbed the cane, twisting the handle and pulling out the blade in one swift move. His grin did not fade, not even when she put the sharp edge of the knife to his throat. He seemed merely…interested.

“So, what now? Do you want to kill me? Fuck me while holding a knife to my throat? You remember it has to go through the heart, right?” He grabbed her wrist and directed the blade in her hand to point to his heart. “Here, my darling.”

The rush of power washed over her, and her core clenched in a wave of heat. Holding all the power in her hand made her feel more alive than she had ever felt since he had bitten her for the first time. She bent down and licked over his parted lips, over his fangs, and even dared to push her tongue into his mouth and take possession of him. He groaned, and Belle tore away. Oh yes, she wanted to make him suffer. Still pointing the blade to his heart, she slipped her fingers between her legs and circled her clit, slipped her fingertips between her folds and spread the wetness there. He watched her, fascinated, but when he wanted to touch her, put his hands to her hips, she hissed, like an animal defending itself. His hands stilled in midair, and he just watched her, as she pushed two fingers deep inside her. Her head fell back, exposing her throat, and she was close.

“Belle, please…” He was begging, and another thrill rolled over her. She had made him beg. She had the power. She decided. She withdrew her fingers from her core before her climax would render her helpless, and put them to his lips.

“Lick them clean”, she rasped, and groaned when he sucked them into his mouth, sucked her wetness from them as if it was honey, or blood. He grasped her hand, licked over her palm and her wrist, and pulled her a little closer, so he could lick the inside of her forearm as well. The blade in her grip trembled when she leaned closer. He reached the crook of her elbow and bared his teeth before biting into her. Belle flinched, and gasped. She had expected it, but it hurt nonetheless, and when he started sucking the blood welling up from the bite, she moaned. He had his eyes closed, drinking from her like someone dying of thirst, and her heart opened at the beauty his face radiated. He needed this so much. Needed her. He let his free hand glide over her side, from her ribcage down to her waist, and Belle thrust her hips forward. She still needed release, and it almost took her when he slipped his hand between her legs, covered her cunt with his palm and stroked her, tickling her entrance with his fingertips. The sensation was too much. She gritted her teeth in her effort to fight her climax, to keep control, over him as well as over her own body. When he had fed from her without her knowing, he had taken away her control. And she still resented him for it. He pinched her clit, and she felt dizziness closing in. He took too much blood, after drinking from her only the day before, and she wanted to pull away.

“Stop it”, she hissed, but he didn’t comply at once. Maybe he didn’t hear her. But it brought back the helplessness she had felt the first time, after discovering what he had done, and it fueled her fury. He held her arm clutched to his lips, gulping down her blood, and it was dripping in dark red trickles out of the corner of his mouth and onto the mattress. She started to feel lightheaded, so she punched his cheek with the handle of the knife. His eyes flew open, and he tore away his lips.

“I told you to stop”, she rasped, and buried the blade up to the hilt in his chest, aiming for his heart. Her anger gave her the strength to push the knife in, get over the initial resistance of his skin and flesh, all the way in. The blade slipped over a rib and changed its direction, but it found its target nevertheless.

He stared at her, his face shocked and smeared with her blood, and she locked eyes with him, wanted to see his life slip from him, wanted to see death claim him. Blood bubbled up, welled over his lips, and still he stared at her as if he couldn’t believe that she had really killed him. Belle twisted the knife in his chest, leaned on it with all her weight, and she heard it creak between his ribs, sickening and freeing at the same time. Her face was wet, but she didn’t realize that it was covered in her tears, until they fell down from the tip of her nose, onto her hands around the handle of the knife, mingling with the blood that ran down her arm from the bite.

“You stabbed me.”

A shiver cold as ice ran down her spine and made her back convulse in fear. He didn’t sound as if he was dying. He gurgled a bit from the blood in his throat, but other than that…She leaned heavier onto the knife. But he didn’t die. Out of nowhere his arm shot up, and he closed his fist around her throat, wrenching her away from the blade in his chest. He flung her on her back, with the force of a bull, not the weakness of a dying man, and Belle realized in horror that the knife wouldn’t kill him. He had lied to her. He towered over her, and blood was dripping from the wound in his chest down the hilt of the knife, down on her. She tried to tear away his hand from her throat, gasped for breath, but it was futile. He denied her to breathe while pulling the knife out of his chest, unimpressed by her blows, as if her fists were not more than flies landing on his skin, and her struggle became weaker.

“That was really nasty of you, dearie. But it takes a lot more than that to kill me.” He watched her for another moment, watched her flailing and choking, and his face became blurry, grey fog closing in on her. Only when she was about to lose consciousness, thought he would strangle her to death, did he let go of her throat, allowed her to breathe. Belle coughed, and choked, retched, and her head felt as if it would explode, burst. He straddled her, sat down on her chest, his weight preventing her from inhaling deep enough, from filling her lungs with air, and then he grabbed her chin, dug his nails into her jaw, hard, as if he was about to crush it in his grip. She sobbed. Panted.

He had lied. He couldn’t be killed with that knife. He wouldn’t die. She tried to form a word, tried to send him out. “L…”

“Ah! I don’t think so.” He covered her lips with his hand, moving faster than a snake, smothering every sound with his brutal grip. When he bent down, brought his face close to hers, she closed her eyes, shut him out. But she could not shut out the feel of his tongue rasping over her cheek, or his breath on her face.

“Why the tears, dearie? Because you couldn’t kill me?” His lips moved over her skin, over her jaw, to the sensitive spot right beneath her earlobe, and his hand quashed every single one of Belle’s uncontrollable sobs. His teeth grazed her skin, and pain like none she had experienced before seared through her when he bit down into her neck. He didn’t bother to mask the pain for her this time. The way he tore into her throat proved that he wanted her to feel it. Wanted her to suffer.

Belle exhaled, with a sigh that was swallowed by his palm, and forced her body to relax. Death was not so scary, after all. And when the blackness closed in and claimed her, she was almost at peace.        

 


	13. Impasse

Nursing her back to health was tedious. He had stopped feeding from her as soon as she blacked out – because, after all, what was the merit of punishing her if she didn’t feel the pain – and he had not taken enough blood to put her in any real danger. But he had been brutal enough to leave some serious scars, on her skin as well as on her soul. And taking her with him, locking her up in his house…well, it wasn’t the best course of action, even he could see that. On the other hand, leaving her behind, severely injured and with the knowledge of his misdeeds, was not an option.

Why had she stabbed him?

The question burned beneath his cold skin, in the wound the knife left in his chest, and in his throat with every drop of her blood that he gulped down. He didn’t intend to let her go before he knew. Well, he didn’t intend to let her go at all.

“Why did you stab me?” he asked her the first time she opened her eyes. He had watched her out of a corner of the room he had put her in, seated in a leather armchair, and nearly invisible in the dark. She flinched at the sound of his voice, and touched the bandage around her neck. He imagined that the bite had to be quite painful, but he actually liked the idea of inflicting pain on her. She deserved it. And judging by the way she paled, she was shocked to learn that she was still alive. And still at his mercy.

She swallowed, and discovered the glass with water on her nightstand. She had to drink, to compensate the blood loss, and he watched as she drank, and a few drops of water ran down her chin, down her throat. He wanted to lick them away, wanted to taste the salt on her skin, the remains of sweat, from lust and fear and fight. She was still filthy, covered in blood, his as well as hers. He wanted to keep her that way, to remind her of his power. She tugged at the flimsy negligee he had put on her before carrying her out of her apartment. It was soaked with blood, stiff, and ruined. She should be thankful that he had dressed her at all. She looked from the fabric between her fingertips to him, and narrowed her eyes.

“I stabbed you because I wanted to kill you. Obviously.”

He creased his forehead. He had expected her to be shocked, cringing. The first time he had bitten her, fed on her blood, she had been in shock for weeks. The second time…well, he supposed she had tried to overcome her fear then. Had tried to find a way to feel better. She was all about control. Control over herself. Over her life. She wanted to control _him_ when she let him into her home. Not that he would ever give her any control again. No, he stripped her of that. Among other things. And he had expected her to be in shock again when she woke up, came to her senses in a strange place, a strange bed, and with him lurking in the dark like a nightmare. She was about control. He was about theatrics.

Only that she was neither meek nor feeble. She was angry.

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, dearie, but I’m not dead. At least not deader than before.”

“I can see that.”

“Why did you want to kill me?”

She raised her brows. As if his question was utterly stupid, and he of all people should know the answer. “You are a killer. You killed Greg – in my apartment – and you didn’t stop feeding from me when I told you to. That was a very nasty thing to do.”

She threw his own words back at him. As if she wasn’t lying in a bed in a room with a vampire who had nearly killed her just a few hours before. He rose from his armchair and stepped to the bed, and bent down, bringing his face so close to hers he almost touched her. He wanted her to be scared. And he was sure she would be, if he came close enough, sat down on the edge of her bed, sniffed her scent from her cheek and granted her a glimpse of his fangs.

She didn’t even turn her face away from him.

“Why are you not afraid?”

“You can’t do anything worse than kill me.” She even turned her face to him now, and he felt her breath on his cheek, warm and humid.

“That’s exactly where you’re wrong, dearie.” It was meant as a threat, one that should alert her to her position, the danger she found herself in. But she didn’t react quite as he had anticipated. No. She laughed. Too loud, and too harsh, but not feeble. Not quivering, trembling, thin. It took him by surprise, and he straightened, sat upright, with his back tight. Maybe she had already lost her mind. Snapped.

He was almost sure of that when she pushed herself up, and brought her face close to his. “So, what are you going to do to me? You won’t kill me, obviously, because then I’d already be dead.”

She cocked her head, still too close, almost touching his skin, and he had to keep himself from backing away further. This was going all wrong. She should be senseless in fear. Maybe her shock had dulled her fear. Maybe she needed some time to realize what had happened. What he had done to her. And would do again.

“So, what will it be? Will you keep me here as your prisoner and feed from me when it’s convenient to you? Your own little blood supply? Your fucktoy?”

He winced, without wanting to. The shock had turned her insane. This was not the sweet librarian talking. This person, he didn’t know. Swift, snakelike, he grabbed her throat and flung her onto her back again. Denied her to breathe.

“Watch your mouth, dearie. I’d hate to rip out your tongue.” Her eyes widened, her pupils dilated, and finally he saw fear. Only then did he let go of her, allowed her to breathe again.

She rubbed her throat, and with a surge of pleasure, he saw her lips tremble. It was too soon to feed from her again, but smelling her, her fear, her skin, and the sweet pulse of her blood right beneath it, made him burn with his thirst for her. It was a sweet torture to have her this near, and to have her there as his alone.

“There is no need to be this nasty. It’s not as if I was free to go, isn’t it?”

She was still talking back at him. And it confused him. This was not the way his prey was supposed to behave.

“Why did you have to stab me?” he asked again. He would ask again and again, every day for the next fifty years if he had to, until he understood. He had offered her the blade as a medium to feel safe with him, give her the illusion of control. He had not expected her to actually use it on him. And somehow, he felt betrayed. Betrayed, because she had not trusted him half as much as he wanted her to. Not that he deserved trust – and he was not blind to the irony of it – but some tiny part of him wanted her trust. Wanted her to trust him enough to give herself over, again and again.

Which created, again, a dilemma. There was nothing as sweet as the taste of her surrender, of freely given blood. Nothing quite as rich as blood flavored with lust and the trembling of pleasure pain. _Her_ pleasure and _her_ pain. Too bad he had maneuvered himself into an impasse. He could take nothing from her that wasn’t against her will. Her blood would be soiled with hatred and defiance. Because somehow, her blood was not the same when he took it from her against her will. When he had ripped into her throat, after she had stabbed him, the taste of her blood had been sickening, like rotten fruit on his tongue. He had never before experienced something like this. And he wondered if it was really something in her blood that was responsible for it, or, worse, something inside him. Whatever it was, it kept him from feeding from her.

Alas, she didn’t know that, and there was no need to tell her.

“I stabbed you”, she said, and she emphasized every word, cold and clipped, “because you didn’t stop when I told you to stop. You gave me that knife to stab you in the heart if you were to do anything that hurt or scared me. Only you lied to me. It didn’t kill you.”

“And you are angry about that?” It irked him that she seemed to think that he was in the wrong, when she was the one who had attempted to kill him. Of course, he was a killer. And it was not so much the notion of someone wanting to put him to his end that bothered him, but that it was her.

“Oh no, I’m thrilled.” She pushed herself up again and leaned against the headboard. “I’m thrilled because you are not only not dead, but holding me captive, and that was of course exactly what I wanted to happen.”

“Watch your mouth.” He rose from the bed and turned. Maybe, when she was over her shock, he would get his answer.

“Why? Don’t like it when someone speaks the truth?”

Slowly, he turned around again. Something about her had changed. Somehow, she had found the strength to fight him, and he realized, with a surge of anticipation, that he had not broken her. Not at all. The way she stared at him, her eyes narrowed, her chin lifted, her fear shoved back and tied tightly into some hidden corner of herself, told him that. No, instead of breaking her, making her weak, he had created something else. As if he had stripped her not only of her control, but worse, of her weakness. Of her fear. She had decided to stand up to him, to the darkness that made her life a living hell. That was…interesting.

“Why are you not afraid?” he asked again, and stepped back to the bed.

“Is this how it’s going to be now? You, asking me the same questions over and over again? You took away my choice. Again.” She closed her eyes, and her chest heaved with the deep breath she took in. “So the only choice left to me is whether or not I’m going to let my fears rule me.”

“I don’t understand.” He waited for her to say something else, more, explain, but she didn’t.

“I’d like to be alone now.”

She didn’t even ask. No, she just sent him out. Rum contemplated if he should punish her for that insolence, _make_ her fear him, do something cruel and unforgiveable. But then, it was not worth it. And strangely, his actions of punishing her, taking away her choices and her freedom, that was what had made her defiant in the first place. So he suspected, if he was to do something cruel, it would only fuel whatever it was that made her fight. Just as before.

It was odd to submit to her, comply with her wishes, odd to do as she said and leave her room – her prison, really – but it didn’t taste sour on his tongue, didn’t make his insides burn in distaste and bloodlust. He remembered the taste of submission, remembered how it felt to be brought low, to be kicked after already lying on the ground, in the dirt, with a taste of mud, shit and leather in his mouth, and remembered the sweet taste of revenge when he ripped out hearts and throats of those who made him lick their muddy boots. He remembered death as being born into a new life, a life without submission. Now he was the one who subjugated. He was the one without mercy, the one who toyed with the hopes of his victims, only to crush them, and revel in their realization that to come down before him didn’t save their lives, just as the light of life left their eyes with their last, gurgling breaths.

It didn’t feel quite as sweet to make her bend, to bring her down.

He locked her in, let her alone for a few hours. Shortly before dawn, he brought her water, and something to eat. He even included a book with the tray. She seemed to be asleep, her breath steady, and she had entangled herself with her blanket.

He stared at her bare leg that had kicked away the warm covers, stared at it and fought his thirst, the desire to lick over her skin, following veins and finding the perfect spot to bite into her. Maybe on the inside of her thigh. He would have to spread her legs, hold her. Bite her a little further up her thigh than the time she had let him feed when she came into his house. He placed the tray with food on her nightstand, and its rattle and chinking ripped her out of her sleep.

“Don’t eat everything at once. This is all you will get till tonight.”

She stared at the tray, and at him, and he could see how her brain started ticking, how she started to think over ways to get out of his house as long as daylight confined him. And for a moment, he thought about chaining her to the bed. On the other hand, he was curious if she would find a way out. Rather unlikely, but she _was_ clever.

“Are you going to be asleep during the day?” she asked, and he almost laughed.

“Prying on my weaknesses, dearie?”

“Just curious.” She scrunched up her face, looking like a confused pug, and he suppressed the urge to mimic her expression. He watched as she took the book from the tray and examined it, letting her fingertips glide over the embossed letters on the title.

“Will you try to kill me again?” he asked, and she looked up, startled, as if his question had hauled her back from somewhere far away.

“Yes.” She met his eyes, and did not even look away when he bared his teeth in a snarl. Instead, she smiled, and tilted her head. “Why do you ask? Afraid?”

“Just curious.” He turned, shrugging, and locked her in again. He needed a plan what to do with her, should she still be there after sunset. Once again he wondered how she managed to put him into such precarious places all the time. He had never hesitated to kill, or take blood from his victims, regardless of their opinion on the matter, but with her…He still wanted her alive. Still hungered for the spark of life each touch with her created inside him, the ecstasy her blood created. He didn’t want that to end. He wanted to drink from her for the rest of her life. And yet, he couldn’t. She had created another dilemma for him, and it was tedious. Truly annoying. What was he supposed to do with her now? He could hardly keep her as a pet, he didn’t want to kill her, but he couldn’t let her go either, because she would probably come back to burn his house down while he was asleep.

When Rum lay down to sleep, he had a skull splitting headache, for the first time in centuries. And it wasn’t gone when he awoke after sunset and found her still in her room. It looked as if she had not even tried to escape, and this annoyed him most of all.


	14. Adjusting

Belle was still weak. And although she wanted to leave this place, escape her imprisonment, she knew she had to be stronger to do so. After she had eaten something of the food he had brought her, oh so very considerate, she tried standing up, walking, but when she put her feet to the ground, dizziness closed in and made her sway. She dragged herself to the window, tried to open it – without any hope, because she knew he was not as stupid as to make her escape easy – and she wasn’t really surprised when it didn’t open. She could try to smash it in, but at the moment she could hardly stand.

And then, when she would have shattered the glass of the window, she would have to climb down the façade. Of course she could just jump and hope she wouldn’t break any bones in the process. Or take the sheets and make a rope, just like in TV. As much as she wanted to escape, she wanted to survive her escape. And there was still the question burning beneath her skin of how to kill him. He had lied about the knife. Maybe he had lied about having a heart, too. And, other than she herself by the injuries he had caused her, he seemed not troubled by the wound she had inflicted on him.

When she had regained consciousness and had found herself in a bed that was not her own, in a dark room she didn’t recognize, she panicked for a moment. Then the pain of her neck made her realize that she was very much alive. And it showed her, in a flash much like an epiphany, that Gold not only had not killed her, but kept her alive – which was not the same thing. With the realization of that came the knowledge that she had nothing to lose anymore. The moment right before she had lost consciousness had taken away her fear, and death ceased being scary. _Gold_ ceased being scary. And he became even less scary when he tried to threaten her, after she awoke in his house, and her defiance left him utterly confused.

She was surprised herself. Rationally, she should be afraid. Terrified. And she wondered if it was shock that kept her fear at bay. But even when he threatened her, told her that death was not the worst thing he could do to her – and she was aware of that, no need to remind her – she had found a safe place in her heart that told her to look him into his stone cold eyes, lift her chin, and take the blow. She had stabbed him, he had nearly killed her, but the moment she had been sure to die erased it all and made their score even again. She survived, and the knowledge of what was behind her gave her the strength to face was lay before her. Nevertheless was she surprised that her new found strength startled him just as much as her. And he became even more confused when he came back after sunset and found her still in that room. As if he had counted on her escape. Which made her suspect that escaping him couldn’t be that hard.

“You seem surprised”, she said, putting the book in her hands down into her lap. She sat in bed, leaned against the headboard, reading, and she was aware that her position made her vulnerable. He had her at a disadvantage. On the other hand, she knew she could put him off by remaining in that position. Looking as if she wasn’t scared by his presence. As if there was no need to face him in a way that enabled her to fight. It was a little like facing a cheetah: run, and you’re prey.

“I’m not surprised. I locked you in, remember? Why should I be surprised to find you here?” He sounded irritated, and Belle realized that somehow, in an odd turn of events, she had gained the upper hand. Though she had no idea how.

“Did you expect me to be gone? Did you expect me to flee, so that you could hunt me down again? Is this some kind of perverse game you’re playing?” She didn’t take her eyes off his face, and he shifted on his feet, as if her questions made him uncomfortable. Which was ridiculous. Unless she hit the truth, somehow. “Is it?” she asked. Not that she expected him to tell her the truth. Not anymore.

“I don’t play with the food.” He didn’t look at her, but fixed his gaze on the empty tray of food on her nightstand.

“That’s a lie. Unless fucking is a vital part of your feeding ritual, of course.” She was blunt, and the word almost caught in her throat and made her choke. But she had noticed his reaction the night before, when she asked if he wanted to keep her as his toy. He couldn’t handle her bluntness, and his obvious discomfort made her curious how far she could go.

“It isn’t”, he growled, and his face gave away his anger. She had hit a weak spot.

“So, if you usually don’t fuck you prey…what am I?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why keep me alive at all?”

He didn’t respond, and Belle wondered if he even knew an answer to that. He took the tray from her nightstand and turned, about to leave again. Still he didn’t look at her, but Belle noticed the tremors running down his back, noticed his clenched jaws, and noticed his protruding fangs. He was angry and hungry, hungry for her, and she wondered why he held back. Not that she wanted him to feed from her – hell, no – but it made her wonder why he had taken her at all. Why keep her alive, lock her in, feed her, if not for having her at his disposal? That was odd. 

“I’d like to have some decent clothes”, she said, calm and very conscious of the tone of her voice. She didn’t want to sound demanding. Nor did she want to sound begging. She simply stated a fact.

“I gave you something to dress.” He turned and gesticulated to the negligee she was still wearing, the stiff, blood soaked fabric of it itching on her skin. Belle narrowed her eyes.

“How very…considerate of you”, she said. Keeping her eyes locked with his, she slipped out of bed and blocked his way, folding her arms in front of her chest.

“Do you expect me to produce something out of thin air? I’m a vampire, not a wizard.” He looked away, and Belle felt a rush, as if she had won a battle.

“I don’t know much about vampires. Maybe you could educate me a little.”

He snorted, and stepped around her to leave again. “I don’t think so.”

Belle waited until he reached the door and opened it one handed, before she spoke again.

“There’s another little thing.” She went to fetch the water jug she had placed beside his leather armchair in the corner. His gaze followed her, and she could see his confusion thicken when she brought him the jug and placed it on the tray. “I need to go to the bathroom once in a while.”

He looked as if he was about to smash the tray against the wall, but he managed to stand still as a stone. “I forgot about that”, he said, and it sounded so much like an apology that Belle felt inclined to forgive him. But she fought it back. He didn’t deserve forgiveness.

“Now you know. And now would be a good time. I’d like to take a shower.”

He stared at her, impassive, as if he was thinking about a way to decline. “You take the jug”, he said finally, and Belle understood that this was his way of giving in. She followed him out of the room and down the hall, where he opened another door to let her into a bathroom. One handed, he pulled the key out of the lock, so she couldn’t lock herself in. “I’m sorry for that, dear”, he said, while letting the key disappear in a pocket of his pants.

“And I believe you, of course.” She rolled her eyes at him, and shut the door into his face. When she looked around, she realized that this had to be his own bathroom, since she found a few personal items over the sink, tooth paste, soap, aftershave, and even a razor – how careless, she thought, but then, she had kind of taken him by surprise. Before she stepped into the shower, she put her negligee into the sink to let it soak in water and hopefully get the stains out.

When she opened the door of the bathroom again, clean and wrapped in a towel, she found Gold waiting outside, still as a statue. The only light in the hallway came out of the bathroom when she opened the door, and she only saw him because she squinted her eyes and searched the hallway for his figure.

“Are you satisfied now?” he asked, and Belle snorted.

“What do you think?”

He didn’t answer that, but narrowed his eyes and took in her state of nearly nakedness. “What happened to the negligee?”

“It’s wet. That’s why I’d like to have something else to dress.” She made an effort to speak calm, reasonable. He creased his forehead, and Belle realized how odd the situation for both of them was. Sure, she didn’t know if it wasn’t a habit of his to abduct his victims and keep them captive in his house, but the way he acted – slightly out of his depth – led her to believe that this was as unusual for him as it was for her.

“Just give me something of yours”, she said, and bit the inside of her cheeks when he bristled, as if she had suggested he might take his precious suits and burn them. “A shirt and some pants will do for a start.”

She expected him to decline. Expected him to press his lips together and just plain out refuse to give her anything to save her decency. After all, she was pretty sure he _wanted_ to humiliate her, in some twisted sense of revenge for getting stabbed by a mere human. But he led her into another bedroom – the master bedroom, she realized – and opened the door to a walk-in closet.

“Pick something”, he said, and it was half a gnarl. His closet was filled with exquisite suits, neatly arranged in sets, shirts in a dark color range, ties…and oh, she’d like to touch the ties, feel the smooth fabric under her fingertips, but she pushed the urge back. This was not a shopping trip, and she was very aware of his presence at the door of his closet, watching her with his sharp eyes.

“Why do you wear sunglasses all the time?” she asked, while examining a row of shirts in dark blue. He didn’t wear the sunglasses in his house, but Belle had rarely seen him without them.

“It’s to conceal my eyes. They betray my thirst.” He said it matter of fact. As if _thirst_ wasn’t an euphemism for his urge to kill. All of a sudden she wanted to get out of the confined space of his closet, and she took three shirts and pajamas, since his pants might be too tight for her. He was still blocking the door when she wanted to step out, and she was forced to halt in front of him.

“Do you feel the thirst now?” she asked, looking at his eyes. They seemed almost black, but that could be due to the dim light. Every light in his house seemed to be slightly dimmed. Maybe the light hurt his eyes. Her question produced a snarl on his face, revealing his fangs. A muscle in his cheek twitched, and he looked almost as if he was in pain.

“Yes, I do.” His voice was hoarse.

“And you think your _eyes_ betray your thirst? I’d be more worried about the teeth. I think that’s kind of the equivalent of carrying a giant boner in your face.” And without paying attention to his startled face, his composure dropping to the floor like a water balloon, she slipped past him and started for her room. He followed after a heartbeat, his steps silent on the wooden floor. When she entered her room, she blocked the doorway, keeping him from following her inside. For a moment, he just stared at her, irritated, and she almost pitied him. He had something of a lion who found a zebra in his cave and didn’t know what to do with it.

“Would you like to join me for dinner?” he asked, and the question was so out of place that Belle was not sure if she had understood him.

“If you’re asking me if I’d like to _be_ your dinner, then the answer is no.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Your fangs say otherwise.”

“And yet, you’re not afraid.”

 “That really irks you, doesn’t it?” she asked, and noticed with pleasure the frown on his face. Yes, she had gotten under his skin. Though she had no idea how. She pressed the stack of clothes to her chest and grabbed her towel to keep it from slipping. Somehow it seemed to irritate him most of all that she wasn’t afraid anymore. She had expected her fear to come back, after a long and lonely day, after hours and hours of time to think and realize that she was a captive, at the whims and mercy of a monster. But all she realized was that she was much more comfortable where she could see him. Staying in the dark was what had driven her insane. Facing the monster gave her at least certainty. “So, when I eat dinner…what do you eat?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why…” He didn’t let her finish.

“You eat with me or not at all. End of discussion.”

“There’s no need to be rude. I’ll dress, and then I will come down to join you. Obviously it means a lot to you.” She closed the door into his face, again, ignoring his sharp intake of breath and the look on his face that said clearer than words that he wasn’t finished yet. He might be a monster, and holding her captive, but he had no clue what to do with her. The only thing he seemed to know was that he didn’t want to kill her. And as much as this soothed Belle, it led her to wonder _why_ he didn’t want to kill her.

When she came down into the dining room, he had set the table for one person, and Belle suspected that he hadn’t prepared the meal himself. It looked like some kind of take-out meal. Lasagna.

“And I thought you want to keep me alive.” Belle wrinkled her nose when she sat down.

“You don’t like lasagna?”

“Does it even matter?”

He didn’t answer, but sat down opposite her and watched her pick at the food on her plate. It was already cold, and tasted rather disgusting.

“Maybe you could bring me supplies so I can prepare my own meals?”

“I don’t do grocery shopping.”

“Well, you could always let me do the shopping.” She smiled her most innocent smile, and he snorted.

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you even have a plan about what you’re going to do with me?” He kept silent and stared very determinedly at her plate. As if it would provide him with an answer. “I take that as a no. You know, they’re probably going to miss me when I don’t open the library. And my family will miss me when it’s Christmas.”

“And you think I care?”

“How many people disappear without anyone noticing?” It was meant as a rhetoric question, but the smile on his face was feral when he answered.

“A lot, that much I can tell you.”

Belle pushed her plate away. “I’m no longer hungry.”

“Upset, dearie?”

“No. It’s not unsettling at all to find out that your host is a serial killer.”

“And this surprises you?”

“No. This is exactly the reason I stabbed you.”

He rose with a start, and Belle wondered if she had gone too far. Maybe he wasn’t as determined to keep her alive as she thought. He stepped to her chair and extended his hand, as if waiting for her to take it and let him help her up. At least he didn’t kill her right away. She ignored his hand when she got to her feet.

“I’d like to have another book”, she said, and he raised a brow.

“Already finished with the last one?”

“Well, the day was long. And I had not really much to do.” She met his eyes calm and unblinking. After a moment, he nodded, unsmiling, and when she didn’t take his hand, he turned away.

“Follow me.”

He led her into his study, a room filled with heavy bookcases that reached for the ceiling, filled with leather bound books, a heavy desk in front of a window and a leather armchair.

“Wow, that’s very…masculine.” She looked around. The room looked more like a setting for a photo shoot than an actual room where someone spent his days…well, nights, in his case. It was neat and tidy, and there were almost no personal items. He watched her from the door, and he looked almost uncomfortable. His hands flexed around his cane, and his jaw twitched.

“Just pick a book”, he said.

“I might need some time for that.”

“Well, if you want me to do grocery shopping, you have to hurry up. Because, my dear, I’m not going to let you sneak around while I’m away.” He sounded miffed, and Belle contemplated how she ever found him scary. He was more like a confused puppy than a predator.

“You could always chain me to the ladder. Then I could look through your books while you’re away.” She pointed her chin to the metal ladder, fastened to a brass banister that led around the bookcases. Very convenient.

“You would let me chain you up? Are you insane?”

“Well, I guess, if you wanted to kill me, or feed from me, it would make no difference if I’m chained up or not. And I rather spend the evening here with books, than upstairs all alone.”

He narrowed his eyes, and Belle tried to overcome the urge to comfort him. He looked completely at a loss, and she suspected she had to tread more careful. If she pushed him to hard, he might snap and lash out – speak, hurt her, just to get rid of the confusion she caused him. She was hardly surprised at all when he produced a pair of handcuffs out of a drawer of his desk, but she couldn’t suppress a sharp intake of breath when he stepped to her, much too close, and took her left wrist, very gently. He lifted it up, like a shield between their faces, and closed the cold metal around it without breaking eye contact. Belle swallowed when the closure clicked. All of a sudden she wondered if it wasn’t insane to trust him with her life – not that it was hers to give, since he had taken it from her again, by abducting her – but letting him chain her up, freely, meant to trust him much more than was reasonable. He tugged at the cuffs to pull her to the ladder, and he fastened the other cuff slightly above her head. It meant that she had to keep standing, her elbow held up, and she knew that her position would soon get straining, if he kept her waiting for too long. But the way he raised his eyebrows, and trailed the inside of her arm with his nail, told her as clear as words that he wanted it to be uncomfortable. And she allowed him this, knew that he needed to feel as if he was mastering the situation. As if _he_ was controlling _her_. But when he slipped his palm around the nape of her neck, trailing her jawline with his thumb, she hissed.

“This was not an invitation”, she said, and he withdrew his hand.

“I don’t need an invitation. This is my house. I can do as I please.”

“That is actually wrong. I’m not an object. I’m not a part of your house. I don’t belong to you. So, no, you can’t do as you please with me. I decided to let you chain me up. It’s an act of accommodation, not one of submission. There’s a fine line there.”

He looked at her as if she was a doll that had suddenly come to life and started talking. She supposed that he had never seen his prey other than as objects. And it was only natural. She didn’t get friendly with every cow she ate either. But he had crossed the line with her, when he started sleeping with her, and kept her alive. She no longer was merely prey and nothing else. But she wasn’t sure if he had realized that, too.

“So what will you do if I take you anyway?” He stepped closer again, close enough to let her feel the threat he was. Close enough for her to feel the coldness of his skin, of his being, like something that sucked warmth and life from her without even touching her.

“There is nothing I could do against it, chained up or not. I have to trust that there is good in you, have to trust you to do the right thing.”

He dipped down his head, as if he wanted to kiss her, and Belle held her breath. “And do you trust me?” he asked, and his voice was a low growl that filled her lower belly with heat.

“No.”

He straightened, furrowing his brows, and stepped back. “Well, I don’t trust you either.”

“At least we have that settled.”

He smiled, a toothy grin that showed off his beautiful fangs. “Have fun with your books”, he said, before leaving her without another word. And Belle started to dig through the shelves. Maybe she found some reliable sources about vampires in the library of a vampire. Maybe she found a clue of how to kill him.   


	15. Bound in Chains

He hadn’t done grocery shopping in like three centuries, and he was not sure why he even bothered. Maybe it was just so he could get out of the house, away from her and her scent that drove him insane. And away from her strange determination not to be scared of him. Having her decidedly unscared in his house somehow defeated his purpose. Not that he was all that certain what his purpose was. But while he packed vegetables and rice and pasta and cans into a basket, he was painfully aware of the fact that she was in his house. Chained to a ladder. And she had no idea how close to biting into her he had been. Her sweet blood pulsing beneath her skin, the flutter of her pulse at her throat…Somehow he had to coax her into giving herself to him. If she gave herself freely, he could drink from her. But how to win a woman determined to kill him? And he had not doubted for a second that she told the truth when she said she still wanted to kill him. He didn’t even doubt that he deserved it.

Out of a whim he packed a few chocolate bars into the basket. And almost put them back onto the shelf when he realized how ridiculous the notion of a vampire buying chocolate was. He felt positively humiliated when he paid for the things in his basket, and swore to himself that he would make her pay for this. And his resolve held until he came back home. Of course she was still chained to the ladder. Delicious and defenseless. He had not been away for long enough as that her standing position could have exhausted her, but she seemed glad to see him again anyway. Obviously she thought he would unchain her. But he wanted to control her, wanted to gain the upper hand again – though he had no idea how he lost it – and letting her feel his physical control seemed a good point to start. So, after putting away the groceries, he joined her in the study, sat down in his leather armchair and just watched her.

At first she was irritated. He didn’t greet her, just watched her, enjoying how his gaze made her nervous, how her heart began to flutter and her breath became shallow. But after a while, she turned her back to him and continued scouring his bookshelves. She had difficulties to reach the lower shelves with her hand chained up over her head, and after watching her bending and twisting around to pull out books from the lowest shelf, he became aware of his own pulse quickening. She pulled out book after book, skimming through it and putting it back. Every time she bent down, the pajamas she was wearing sagged down, and from time to time he caught a glimpse of the small of her back, or her belly, and once he even saw the curve of a breast.

She just ignored him, although she couldn’t be possibly unaware of the skin she revealed to him. On the other hand, she was so immersed in his books that she probably didn’t notice at all. And when he realized that she didn’t even notice him anymore, he became irritated. When had he become so harmless that it was safe to ignore him?

“Found something yet, dearie?”, he asked, and she jerked up as if he had startled her in earnest. And she looked at him as if she really had forgotten his presence.

“Nothing useful, I’m afraid.” She held a book in her hand, and her nails dug into its leather spine as if she wanted to leave scratch marks on it. For a moment he imagined her to leave those marks on his skin, scratching him in feverish passion. His jaws began to prickle, and he pressed his tongue against his teeth.

“What are you looking for? Maybe I can be of help.” He knew what she was looking for. And he knew she wouldn’t find it here. But he was curious if she would admit that she searched for clues how to end him. It was not as if she was very subtle about her aversion towards him.

“Hm…something reliable on vampirism?”

She really was bold. He snorted. “Not even vampires are a reliable source on vampirism, much less books.”

“I noticed.” She smiled, thin and knowingly, and shame prickled at the base of his skull. He hated the feeling. It made him want to apologize for lying, and at the same time it made him want to rip out her throat for making him feel something he had thought himself incapable of. He had never felt shame about any of his doings. He had killed countless times. He had killed in the cruelest fashion, and yet she managed to make him feel ashamed about a lie. About lying to _her_. Lying to her about how he could be killed.

“You won’t find anything about that in those books.” Even his voice sounded miffed, giving away his true feelings. She looked at him, her head tilted, with that ghostly smile that made it painfully obvious how much he failed at being scary and secretive. He could just as well tell her of his shame. Maybe she would even open up to him if he admitted the burning feeling of disgrace right beneath his ribs. He rose from his armchair, fast and with barely hidden violence in his movements. He wanted her to feel the threat. And she did, flinched when he was at her side in the blink of an eye. But just as quick as her fright appeared on her face, it was gone again. She drew a deep breath, and found again whatever it was that gave her strength. He clasped her wrist just beneath the handcuff that tied her to the ladder and felt her pulse quicken.

“Let me feed from you”, he said, a low growl, and bent his head down to bask in her scent at the crook of her neck. She trembled, but she didn’t move. Not that she could go anywhere.

“So you’re asking permission now?” Her voice dripped with loathing, and it kindled the shame and humiliation that gnawed at his insides. But regardless how much he wished to just bury his teeth in her, he couldn’t. And it was not only the memory of the rotten taste of blood taken against her will that kept him from doing so. It was just as much the shame, and his wish she would recognize him, and take that burning feeling away from him.

“Please.”

He flinched when she lifted her hand and cupped his cheek, his aching jaws, her fingertips cool on his skin. “Why do you ask? Why don’t you just take?” She sounded confused. And the confession that he couldn’t, that she had to give him freely what he craved for, lay on the tip of his tongue, like acid. But if he told her, he gave away the power he held over her, the constant threat he posed. If he told her, he took away every reason she had to be afraid of him. If he told her, he gave her a power greater than anyone ever had had over him. As if she not already was more powerful than anyone before her, just because he was not able to take her at his own will. Just because something inside him strove against taking and killing her. Because it had to be something inside him that spoiled her blood. His inability to kill her made her dangerous.

And she saw his weakness, saw his wish to confess, and used it against him. Without mercy. Not that he deserved mercy. “Tell me”, she said, firmly, and he backed away, let go of her wrist and put as much distance between them as possible.

“There’s nothing to tell.” She didn’t believe him, was not satisfied, he saw it in the way she furrowed her brows, but she didn’t ask further.

“Would you please unchain me, so I can prepare myself something decent to eat?” It sounded like a question, but Rum felt it in his bones like an order. He needed to take himself away from her, needed distance, or he would turn into a detestable puppy at her feet. A slave.

“I’m sorry, dearie, but I have to go out. Make yourself comfortable, it may take a while until I’m back.” He turned his back to her, strode out, and ignored her protest.

“You can’t just leave me here!”

But he could, and he did. He needed to find someone to feed, needed to reassert that he was unchanged, still a monster, not a soft and sorry pet. And he did, but all it achieved for him was to leave an aftertaste of sawdust on his tongue. Compared to her blood, everything else tasted stale, and it worried him how much he was already fixated on her. How was he supposed to exist if he couldn’t drink from her, and every other meal left him starving and craving her all the more? Not even killing his victim brought him the satisfaction it used to bring.

When he came back, hours later, she had managed to wrap herself around the ladder and fall asleep. It didn’t look very comfortable. The shelves of the bookcase dug into her back, and she had wrapped her arms around the ladder to keep herself from falling. She hung heavy on the handcuffs, and looked as if she would crumble to the floor when he would open them. It looked painful, and he wondered how she even fell asleep at all. He decided to unchain her and carry her up into her room, but when he stepped to her and took out the key for the cuffs, she jerked awake, flinching when his cold hand closed around her wrist.

“You’re back.” Her eyes were huge in her face, and she was pale.

“Missed me?” he asked. He stepped away from her as soon as the cuffs were open, and she rubbed her wrist, where the metal had left an angry red mark.

“Almost as much as having my toenails pulled.”

“Oh, I can help you with that. You only have to ask nicely.”

“Sure, and when I say stop you’ll stop, just as before, right?” Her voice dripped with acid, and it made him bristle. He wanted to snarl, wanted to hiss and spit and rip her apart, but the idea of touching her, let alone hurting her, stung like the bite of green ants beneath his skin. It seemed even worse now, after he had fed on some random human. She watched him struggle for a moment, and turned away, shrugging, as if he wasn’t a dangerous monster. As if it was safe to take her eyes off of him. He followed her when she just walked out and into his kitchen, where she found the chocolate bars still sitting on the counter. He had forgotten about those, but seeing how her face lit up in joy brought back the humiliation he had felt when buying them.

“You brought me chocolate! That’s so nice of you!” She even smiled at him, wide and honest. And her smiled eased away the pain of his hurt pride and his humiliation.

“You like that?” He took care to keep at least the kitchen counter between them, a physical barrier between them. Though he no longer knew if it was to protect her from him or the other way around.

“Well, it’s more considerate than I expected you to be.” She unwrapped one chocolate bar and broke off a chunk, but she didn’t eat it right away. “Did you ever try chocolate?”, she asked, looking from the melting sweet in her hand to him.

“No. Food doesn’t give me anything. It all tastes ashen.”

“That’s terrible.” Still she didn’t eat the chocolate, and Rum could smell it when her warmth melted it between her fingertips and intensified the scent of cocoa and sugar. It smelled burnt and cloying, and his nose twitched. “What about other things?”, she asked, narrowing her eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“Well…how taste other things to you? Like…when you lick over skin. You did that quite a lot.”

He couldn’t believe what he heard. She sounded choked, and her face was flushed, but apparently she was really curious how she _tasted_. Her curiosity would get her killed some day. Right now, her question shot right into his loins. He swallowed, and pressed his tongue against his aching teeth.

“It’s different with everything from the human body. It flavors the blood. I taste the salt on your skin, taste fear and ecstasy, because everything you feel has a certain scent. It changes your skin, your blood, your taste. I can smell it, and taste it.”

“You can smell everything?” Her voice was tiny, breathless. He allowed himself to smile.

“I do. Right now I smell the wetness pooling between your legs. You’re getting hot, my dear. Want me to take care of it?” He could be just as blunt as she could be. And his words made her blush, and intensified the scent of her arousal. But also her anger.

“No, thanks, I can take care of that myself. I don’t need a vampire – or any man, at that – to take care of my needs.” And with that, she finally popped the chocolate into her mouth, and licked her fingers clean. “All I need is chocolate”, she mumbled with stuffed cheeks.

“I see. Take the rest with you upstairs. And maybe something else. Food, water, books…” He wanted to lock her away, to get rid of the temptation, the scent, the longing. And just as she didn’t need him, he didn’t need her. There were certain needs he could take care of all by himself. He didn’t need her to get rid of the hunger that made his cock thick and hard. Though he couldn’t remember the last time he had felt the need to take care of himself that way. It certainly hadn’t been in this life.

She looked at him, chewing chocolate, and one of her eyebrows wandered up, as if she knew exactly why he wanted to have her out of the way.

“It’s inconvenient, isn’t it, to have me around?” Her sarcasm would have been much more impressive if there hadn’t been a smudge of chocolate at the corner of her mouth, but it hit its mark nevertheless. He still had no idea what to do with her, and she knew it.

“Well, we all have to accommodate ourselves to inconveniences from time to time.” He pointed to the door, and he didn’t care that she could _see_ how hard he was when she passed him. But before she was out of the kitchen, she halted and faced him, her chin lifted and determination on her face.

“You can’t feed from me, right? When I don’t give you permission. How did that happen?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She was much too close. So close it made his fangs prickle in anticipation. Too late he thought about adding a threat, something to keep her under control: “And I wouldn’t count too hard on it.”

“Tell me the truth.” She didn’t look away, kept her eyes locked with his, and just like that, he felt compelled to do as she said. Felt compelled to tell her everything she wanted to know. As if she had put some spell on him, something that made him melt like wax in her grip.

“I don’t know how it happened. It certainly never happened before.” He spoke quiet, tried to conceal how much it unsettled him by giving his voice the edge of indifference. She looked right past his mask.

“Then why did you want me here? Why not simply leave me, and leave this place behind? Even with me knowing about your crimes, it can’t be too hard to vanish. You’re a vampire, you must have been around for quite a while.”

Every single one of her questions echoed one he had asked himself, and he didn’t know the answer now any more than before. So he just kept silent.

“Is it because I tried to kill you?”

“You shouldn’t remind me of that.”

“Did you already forget?” She smiled, fearless and beautiful, and it made him want her so much more. Made him want her fearless. Brave. Made him want her in every possible way. And it made his jaws and his cock hurt in hunger. But most of all it hurt right between his ribs, where she had stabbed him.

“Maybe you were just lonely.”

It was time to get away. Back into the darkness, back to where he was at home. Away from her and her curiosity, and her cruel warmth. He was no stranger to darkness and loneliness, but he was a stranger to compassion and warmth. And she acted too fearless, too calm, given the fact they had attempted to kill each other only the night before. He had to get away from this strange feeling. Because for the first time in centuries, he craved for nothing more than a kiss.

But he knew, she wouldn’t kiss him. Not even if hell froze over.


	16. Freely given

They found some kind of perverse routine, a shaky balance between them. Belle was locked into her room during the short hours of daylight, but at night she was free to move around the house. Only when he left the house, he chained her to the ladder in his study.

Every day he asked her to let him feed from her, and every day she declined.

Every day she asked why he kept her captive, and every day he refused to answer.

Apart from the short moments when he chained her up, he kept his distance at all times, but she could see nevertheless how her presence tortured him, how his hunger grew more ravenous from day to day. He almost looked as if he was starving, and Belle wondered how long his self control would hold. He was bound to cave in, and she was pretty sure that she would not come out of this alive. She had to find a way to end him.

“You don’t look that well”, she said on the fifth day, when he opened the door of her room to let her out, and he just snarled, paler than before, and bad-tempered. “You seem…ill.”

“I’m not ill.” He didn’t look at her, just waited for her to go to the bathroom, like every day, staring determinedly at the wall beside her door.

“Then what’s the problem? Is it me? Can’t stand my presence in your home?” When he winced, she felt a little as if she had stabbed him again, and twisted the knife in his wound.

“Quite the opposite. I can’t imagine my life without you anymore.” His voice dripped with acid, and Belle laughed. But she clapped her hand to her mouth and stifled it at once.

“You don’t expect me to pity you, do you?” she asked, after she had managed to gulp down the laughter. Now he looked at her, his brows drawn together, and Belle felt like a rare insect under his gaze. One that was so rare it was a once in a lifetime occasion to see it. And in his case, that lifetime was pretty long. Suddenly she felt uncomfortable.

“No. Of course not. Pity is the last thing I want. The last thing I deserve.” He turned around and started for the stairs.

“Maybe not pity, but everyone deserves compassion. At least to some degree.” Belle had no idea where that came from, but she was sure that it was true. She had never seen someone more lonely, more lost, than him.

“Don’t make the mistake of forgetting what I am.”

“I won’t.”

And she was sure she wouldn’t. When she came down, after taking a shower, to prepare herself something to eat, she was very much aware of his ghostly presence. He was not always in the same room with her – most of the time he wasn’t – but he was always close. She had no idea what he did, apart from watching her silently, like a shadow in the dark. She had also no idea what he did when he was out, when he chained her to the ladder in his study and left her there. Sometimes he brought back groceries, and she assumed that he collected the rent. After all, he was a landlord, odd as it was. Of course there was also the very real possibility that he went out to feed. He had to eat, right? It was this notion that kept her wary at all times. Not for her own sake. It kept her wary because it kept her aware of his very nature: he was a killer. And this would never change.

He was lonely and lost and he was a killer. There was blood on his hands, his hands that touched her when he fastened her handcuffs on her wrist, and when he unchained her again when he came back from wherever he was going.

“How many lives have you taken?” she asked when she sat down to eat her simple meal, rice and vegetables, and he watched her from the doorway, half hidden in the dark.

“More than I care to remember.” His voice was hollow, flat.

Belle stared at her plate and was no longer sure if she was hungry at all. But she had asked, and apart from that one crucial time, he had never lied to her, never masked the truth.

“Lost your appetite?”

“How old are you?” She searched for his shadow, tried to make out his face. All she could see were his eyes glinting, reflecting the dim light of the dining room. Belle was used to the dim lights by now, and the dark corners of his house no longer frightened her.

“Centuries…My first life ended around 1692, I believe.”

“So you were an ordinary man before.”

“Why the questions? I may have been, but that man is long gone. There’s nothing left of him.”

“How did your first life end?” She flinched when he was at her side within the blink of an eye, towering over her with his face distorted in a snarl that emphasized his otherness, the lack of humanity in him.

“Enough of the questions. It ended. End of life, end of story.” He didn’t touch her, but Belle felt his closeness in every fiber, as if he was choking her.

“Either you sit down or you go back to your corner. I don’t like it when you go all vampy on me.”

He slumped down onto a chair as if her words had pulled his feet out under him. And he stared at her, slightly shocked.

“Do you need your sunglasses? Your eyes are huge.”

“No, thanks.”

He watched her as she finally started eating, and his eyes followed every fork she brought to her mouth. She decided not to let it irritate her, especially since she knew that it irritated him when she was not stirred by the lingering threat he posed.

“How does it taste?” he asked after a while, and his question brought back their conversation from a few days before. Her body remembered the rush of excitement, and she gulped hard to get rid of the lump in her throat.

“It could do with a little salt.”

“Describe it to me.”

Belle stared down at her plate. Cooking had never been her strong suit, so the food on her plate was mediocre, at best. The vegetables she had fried – onions, peppers, tomatoes and garlic – had been a little too long in the pan and lost their consistence, and the rice was utterly tasteless. But it was still better than the Lasagna he had offered her the first evening.

“Hm…there is a little sweetness, a faint trace of caramel from the onions, mixed with the sharpness and sappiness of the peppers. And the sweet sourness of tomatoes. And the garlic…Does garlic affect you?”

He snorted. “Not in the least. But could you be a little more specific? Those are all very basic descriptions. I could read a cook book for that.”

Belle noticed that he stared at her lips, as if drawn to them like bees to apple blossoms. “Um…the rice tastes mostly like water. Very mild. A little powdery on the tongue. But tomatoes and garlic together taste like summer in France. You know…juicy. Rich. It tickles at the side of my tongue, and it fills the mouth with saliva and is tart at the back of the tongue. It’s so much. And the peppers add a little sprightliness at the tip. And the onions…they coat it all with sweetness. The palate, my gums, everything. It’s like breathing in summer.”

He swallowed, staring mesmerized at her lips, and Belle’s mouth was suddenly filled with too much saliva. She inhaled deeply, bracing herself for the question that burned on the tip of her tongue and made her throat tight. He looked so longing. Longing for a life he had lost long ago, longing for something he would never again experience. Maybe until the end of time. She wanted to show him. Wanted to share something with him that he had long lost and forgotten. “Do you think you could taste it through me…through a kiss?”

Her question startled him out of his trance. “What?”

“Well, you can’t taste the food itself, but you said you can taste every change in the human body, and food has an influence on that, too, right? And you don’t need to bite me to taste that.” It was totally logical. At least that was what she told herself.

“And you trust me that I don’t bite into you? It sounds like folly to me.” He straightened and leaned back, away from her, and Belle shrugged.

“It was only an idea. You asked me to describe the taste to you. I only thought that maybe, instead of telling you, I could show you…And it’s not as if we hadn’t kissed before.”

“Yes, but…that was before…” Still he looked at her as if she was an alien, a creature from a faraway planet.

“Before I tried to kill you and you locked me up?”

“Yes.”

She sighed. “You’re right. It’s stupid.” She resumed eating, and he watched her in silence. When she was finished and brought her plate to the kitchen to clean it, he followed her, a little like a dog that hoped it might get to lick off the remains on a plate.

“I can’t take a kiss from you”, he said, while her back was turned to him and she was scrubbing at the plate. Belle wondered if it was hope and longing she heard in his voice. Or simply hunger.

“You wouldn’t take it. I would give it to you.”

“Freely?”

At this she narrowed her eyes. “The kiss, yes. Nothing else. This is not a lover’s kiss we’re talking about. I’m not a fool.” She turned around to face him, and was surprised to find him still in the passage to the dining room. She had expected him to creep up on her. “You should make up your mind before it’s too late. Tastes are fleeting, they don’t linger on forever.”

“As is life.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Just an observation.” He even backed away then, and Belle shrugged. It had been a foolish idea anyway. And she wasn’t about to press the matter.

“It’s ok if you don’t want to.” She turned her back to him again to dry her plate and put it away.

“But I want to.”

She almost didn’t hear him when he whispered those words, and when their meaning sunk in, a shiver ran down her spine and made her straighten her back. She didn’t react at once. Instead, very slowly, she put the plate back into the cupboard and dried her hands again, because they suddenly were sticky. Only then did she turn around to see him still standing in the passageway. It was her offer. She had to go to him. Belle was aware that her position in this house – her state as a captive, his as her captor – made all of this very complicated. Even if she had offered him a kiss, kissed him freely, he could never be sure if she didn’t do it to appease him as her captor. He could never be sure if she didn’t do it out of the wrong reasons. Neither could she. She would never know if her strange sympathy for him wasn’t born out of her situation. But she shoved those thoughts back, with every step that brought her closer to him. She tried to look confident.

She halted in front of him, too close to feel comfortable, close enough to become aware of his alluring scent. He was as stiff as a statue, and if she wanted to kiss him, she had to go on tiptoes and hold on to him for balance. This would be much too intimate.

“Bent your head a little”, she said, and he swallowed before he did as she said, slowly, and without looking at her. Belle wetted her lips with the tip of her tongue. It was hard to breathe, and she felt electricity prickle on her skin when she tilted her head and touched his lips with hers, softly, imagining to caress his lips with rose petals. He didn’t pull back, so she increased the pressure and opened her lips. His skin was a little colder than hers, but not unpleasantly so, and it warmed with the touch. When she licked over his lips, sucking in his bottom lip, she realized that she liked how _he_ tasted. And it made her deepen the kiss a little more, and finally he answered, bent down a little more, opened up to her and met her tongue with his. And without wanting to, Belle closed her eyes to relish the feels. This was like no other kiss they had shared so far. Even that first kiss on her doorstep had been different, harder, probing, more passionate. This was like the fleeting touch of clouds in the sky. Everything and nothing at all. And when he finally pulled back, with a strange look on his face, she felt something almost like disappointment tightening in her chest. She cleared her throat, and bit her lip. But her voice was still hoarse when she spoke.

“Did you taste it?” she asked. He closed his eyes for a moment, and his hands opened and closed to fists at his side, as if he was fighting the urge to reach out to her and touch her.

“Yes.” His voice was just as hoarse as hers. When he opened his eyes again, his pupils were huge, and his nostrils flared. Thirst, she realized. “Let me feed from you, please?”

It was the first time that he asked her when she was not chained up. And somehow this was of significance, even though Belle didn’t know how, or why. She stepped back, shaking her head.

“How often do you need to feed?”

“Every few days. I can go on for a while without, but it gets painful and more difficult each day.”

“Especially when you have a meal so close around each day, right?”

He didn’t answer that, but the way he lifted his chin and perked his eyebrow was enough confirmation. “When did you feed the last time?”

“Four days ago.”

When he had chained her up in his study for the first time. Belle wondered what he did when he left her. What he did when he wasn’t hunting. The realization that all those people living in this town were nothing but prey to him turned her stomach upside down. She wondered how many of them had disappeared, silently, without anyone noticing. She shook her head again. His gaze followed her when she left for the study, as if waiting for her to change her mind. But she didn’t. When he followed her into his study, she expected him to chain her up again, so he could go out and do something about his thirst. Belle hoped it wasn’t the case, because she almost felt as if she would be responsible when he killed someone else. Because she refused to let him drink her blood. But that was nonsense, of course. His doings were not her responsibility. Neither was his nature. He was a monster, and there was nothing she could do about it.

He didn’t take out the handcuffs, didn’t chain her to the ladder. He just stared at her as she stood there, one hand already on the rungs, ready to let him tie her to it.

“You should go”, he said.

“What?” Belle was not exactly sure what he meant. Was he…setting her free? Sending her out so he could hunt her and kill her out on the streets, like any other prey?

“Go.”

“Why?”

“If I was you, I wouldn’t ask so many questions, but just go. You’re free to go, and I won’t hunt you down, if that is what you fear.” He turned away, and Belle realized that he was about to leave. To him, everything was spoken. This came so suddenly, so fast, she didn’t know what to do. How to react.

“Gold.”

He halted. She had not called him by his name since she found out what he was. And she didn’t even know his first name. If he had one.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, and he shrugged, without facing her.

“Probably change town. Go somewhere else.” He sounded indifferent. It didn’t matter to him, and she didn’t know why it mattered to her. She would hardly hold him back. After a last look to his bookshelves, to the ladder, she decided not to wait for him to change his mind. Without another word, another look at him, she walked into the hall and to the door.

There was another awkward moment when she realized that the front door was still locked, and she was sure, if he had been able to blush, his skin would have been crimson when he came to unlock it. He didn’t look at her, just held the door open for her, his face distorted as if he was in pain. She hesitated for a moment, watched him. But the pain on his face was probably just thirst. His fangs were protruding, and she considered to let him feed from her. Now that she was free, it was no longer complicated, wasn’t it? But the idea alone left a bitter taste at the back of her throat. Just because he let her go didn’t mean he changed. He was still a monster.

“I’ll send you back the pajamas”, she said, tugging at his clothes that she was still wearing. He snorted.

“I don’t need them. Just keep them.”

Belle waited another moment if he would look at her, but he didn’t. So she crossed the threshold, stepped out into the night, barefoot and in his pajamas, and she winced when he closed the door behind her.

She was free. Strangely, she didn’t feel relieved. Her freedom weighed her down, drove her into the ground. She would not see him again.          

 


	17. Light in the Dark

For one crazy, senseless moment, the knock on the front door let him think that she had come back. Only when he opened the door and found Ruby there, he remembered what day it was, and remembered his little arrangement with Ruby. And the realization that Belle had absolutely no reason to ever come back settled in like a rock in the pit of his stomach.

“So…will you let me in or shall we do it on the porch?” Ruby raised a brow, and Gold shook off his disappointment. Devastation was more like it, but he didn’t want to acknowledge that.

“Come in”, he growled, stepping aside. Ruby had done this often enough to know the procedure. She stalked into his living room, slumped into an armchair, and rolled up her sleeve. Gold hesitated in the doorway. He was not sure if he should hold up their arrangement. It seemed pointless, now.

“Aren’t you coming? I don’t have time all day.”

“Yes. Right.” He walked into the room and fetched his instruments, placed neatly on a silver tray. Ruby hardly winced when he inserted the needle to draw her blood. They had done this often enough. It had taken him only seconds to find out about Ruby’s affliction; she had that strong smell of animal about her, musky and sharp, impossible to mistake. And as soon as her scent had reached him, he had allowed himself a thin smile. Ruby didn’t want to be found out. And Gold knew how to use that against her.

It had taken Ruby only insignificantly longer to find out that he was no ordinary human either. She had never let him bite her, and he had never felt the urge to do so. Biting was messy, passionate at times, and he wanted to keep their relationship clean and clearly structured. If he bit her, he would have to kill her, and even though it didn’t matter to him if she lived or died, he quite liked to have her handy.

Contrary to common conception, werewolves and vampires got along just fine. They might not be the best of friends – wolves had a bit of a bad temper most of the time – but they weren’t arch enemies either. And he could drink Ruby’s blood without suffering any lethal side effects. It had a stronger taste than ordinary human blood, comparable to wild boars, somehow richer. More nutritional value, he suspected, but that sounded too much like the thing a human health expert would say.

 “So…have you heard anything from Belle?” Ruby asked while he let her blood drip into a decanter. He didn’t meet Ruby’s eyes.

“Since when?”

“Since I called you from the bar. I called her the next morning, but she didn’t answer. In fact, I haven’t heard from her since then.” There was a pushy tone in her voice, and Gold didn’t like that. He didn’t answer at once. Belle had left his home five days ago, and the only reason he was still here was that lingering feeling of having to wait for something. As if he was waiting for a blizzard to come down on him.

“Did you kill her?” Ruby asked, hard and outright. Gold drew the needle from her vein, not very gentle, and she winced.

“I did not.”

“Then what happened?”

“You’ll have to ask her.” He placed the instruments back on the tray and swirled the blood in the decanter, taking a whiff of its smell. His stomach churned, and although he was starving, the idea of drinking it made him want to retch.

“You’re not very forthcoming.”

“Don’t make the mistake to think we’re friends, dearie. This is a business arrangement.” He put the decanter away and frowned at her. His words had brought a frown to her face as well.

“ _We_ might not be friends, yes. But Belle is my friend. So you better don’t hurt her.”

“And look what a good friend you are, serving her to a vampire on a silver platter.”

She looked at him, her brows raised, but he knew that she couldn’t argue against that. Ruby rolled her sleeve back down and rose from the armchair. “Something about you is different, Gold.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He avoided her eyes, but he saw her frown nevertheless.

“You have a certain look about you…You know, you always were more of a wolf. A predator.”

“I still am, better not forget about it”, he hissed, and Ruby chuckled deep in her throat.

“Yeah, sure. Now I know what you remind me of. You look like a dog. Like an abandoned dog that someone left behind.”

His hand flexed around the glass decanter. Ruby had a sense for weaknesses, and now she had found his. A growl vibrated through the room, and he needed a moment to realize that it was him who gave it off. Ruby tilted her head, and he longed to slap that grin from her face. But he knew better than to act on it.

“Same time in two weeks?” she asked, and Gold looked again at her blood, and flared his nostril with the smell that saturated the room.

“I’ll call you. Maybe I’ll go on a trip.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

When Ruby was gone, he poured a swig of her blood into a wineglass and sipped at it. It tasted disgusting, and he knew he could not drink it. Which left him starving all the more, since he had not drunken anything since the first night he had chained Belle up. He tried to overcome his disgust by swallowing it all down in one large gulp, but it only got worse, and he stumbled into the kitchen and vomited into the sink. The blood clotted brown and black in the sink, the contrast to the white porcelain painful to his eyes.

When he was sure that he wouldn’t vomit again, he let himself sink to the ground, slowly and trembling. He had never before not kept blood down. He had never before felt sick like this. Maybe he would have managed to live on blood that tasted like rotten funguses for the rest of his life, but if he couldn’t even keep it down, he was truly lost. With the putrid taste on his tongue came the realization that he would indeed starve to death, and he cursed the thing inside him that would not let him live any longer. It was like a sickness spreading in his insides. At first it had only kept him from feeding on _her_ if she didn’t consent, and now it kept him from feeding at all, no matter the circumstances. Ruby gave her blood freely. Still, he couldn’t drink it, and when he finally managed to get up again, he poured the rest of her blood into the sink, and opened the tap to wash away the stench of it.

He wondered how long it would take his body to rot alive.

He could just lay down and wait for it. But that wasn’t like him. It was not that late, and he decided to go out. Maybe he could keep down ordinary human blood. Maybe Ruby’s werewolf blood was too strong.

When he roamed the streets, he took care not to come near her apartment complex. Or the library. Nowhere near where even the faintest trace of her scent could linger. Before, he often enough found his prey in the vicinity of one of Storybrooke’s shadier areas at the edge of town, or in the harbor, where one of the former factories now was some kind of dance club. It was Ruby’s favorite hangout, as far as he knew. And this was where he went now. Lurking in the dark, he watched people come and go, smelled them, drenched in perfume when they came, and sweat, smoke and alcohol when they left. Not one of them made him hungry enough to overcome his inner block. He was about to leave his lair in the dark, when he heard a familiar voice. Ruby. And then he smelled _her_. Fuck.

“Are you sure about this, Belle? That’s not your usual style. It’s not classy. It’s filthy, and full of jerks.”

“I know. But I want to go dancing. I need this. I need to get the last two weeks out of my system.”

“What happened to you?” Ruby asked. So Belle had not told her.

“Nothing happened. I spent a few days with…a friend. Wasn’t really pleasant.”

“Why not?”

“We had a disagreement.”

This was the most nonsensical description of attempted mutual murder, being abducted and held captive, that he ever heard. Gold thought that she sounded as if she needed professional help to process that. She couldn’t possibly be that forgiving. She could not get over that so easily. He had expected her to curl up in her apartment for weeks, only go out in daylight…Instead, she went out dancing. In the dead of the night.

As if drawn by invisible strings, he followed her, followed her and Ruby into the club – and he paid an extraordinary bribe to the bouncer, who thought him to be too old for this kind of amusement. If he only knew.

The stench inside the club was overwhelming, close to the disgusting stench on the ship that had once brought him over to America. And as soon as he was in, stuck between bodies moving in ridiculous dance moves, he wanted to get out again, and preferably rinse out his nose with vinegar to burn away the stench. Why was he even following her?

His eardrums nearly split with the volume of the music – if that was what it could be called – and the flashing lights made it hard for him to see. The air was thick with vaporized sweat, and it was like moving through a haze. He lost her scent. And with the loss of her scent, he realized how inane his actions were. Ruby was right. He truly was a dog. A puppy. He came to a halt amidst the dancing crowd, motionless for the length of an heartbeat. Then he turned and made his way out.

He had no idea how long he had been in the club, but when he left, and got her scent again, he knew that they were destined to meet that night. She was not far from the club, and she was alone, around a corner, leaning against a wall and breathing heavily. Clutching her sides, as if she was fighting a panic attack. He crept closer.

“Are you just going to watch me out of the dark, or are you going to say hello?” Her voice was as sharp as a knife.

“Not surprised to see me?”

She laughed, hollow and cold. He came closer, stepped into the dim light of a street lantern, and she flinched when she saw him.

“Goodness, you look awful.”

“I need to feed.” He was done pretending. He needed to feed, or he would soon cease to exist.

“Then why didn’t you?”

“I couldn’t. I tried, and I couldn’t.”

She looked at him, straight into his eyes, and he felt her gaze like something physical, like a touch, binding him and holding him in place. When she pushed herself from the wall and stepped closer, a shiver ran down his spine. And when she lifted her hand and cupped his cheek with her gloved hand, her touch seemed to burn right through his skin.

“I’m sorry that you’re not feeling well”, she whispered, and he swallowed. She let her hand sink again, and folded her arms.

“Maybe…if I could just…be with you?” The question burnt like acid on his tongue, but at the same time, it wrapped itself around his twisting insides and soothed the pain he felt. It would be enough, he realized. It would be enough if she only saw him, _him_ , not the monster he was.

“Why did you leave the dance?” he asked, after a while, when she just stared at him. She licked her lips, and swallowed.

“I thought I wanted this. I thought I wanted to dance, to sweat, to move to exhaustion, to feel life. But there were so many people, and it was loud, and smelly, and it was too much. And I lost Ruby…”

“I was not here to watch you.” Somehow this had nothing to do with what she just told him, but it was important to him that she knew this. She smiled.

“I believe you. Do you want to walk me home? I don’t think I want to go back in to find Ruby.”

“You trust me?”

“I think I would already know if I couldn’t.”

He raised his brows, and she giggled, a sound that rippled through him like a ray of sunlight. He had to close his eyes for a moment, and inhale deeply to choke down the squeak that tickled in his throat. She felt like sunlight. _She felt like sunlight_.

It was quite a run to her apartment, and they walked silent for most of the way, side by side.

“Have you ever heard of something like this happening?” she asked, when they were almost there.

“What?”

“Well…of a vampire who couldn’t feed.”

“No. It certainly never happened to me.”

They walked in silence again, and he watched as she kneaded her hands. He could smell faint traces of sweat, mixed with damp wool from her knitted gloves.

“So what are you going to do now?”

He shrugged. “Die, probably. It’s not as if I hadn’t lived long enough. And I’m no loss for this world.”

She bit her lip, and her breath gusted as a cloud of white mist from her mouth. “I would mourn you.”

They had reached her doorstep, and he halted, feeling as if he was falling. “Why?”

“I don’t know. You did terrible things to me, and to others, probably. But there is something inside me that feels for you. So, yes, I would mourn you.”

“I don’t know if I should scold you for your naivety or thank you for your compassion.” He shook his head. She was a mystery to him. And he noticed, with some distant part of his mind, that he was not even thirsting anymore. All the time that he had been walking at her side, he had been calm, and his thirst had been gone. She had soothed him.

She fumbled with her keys and opened her door, but she didn’t cross the threshold at once. Instead, she looked at him, tilting her head. “Do you want to come inside?”

“Why?”

She stepped to him and placed her hand on his arm, and he could feel a prickle tingle over him from where she touched him, despite the layers and layers of clothes that separated them.

“Back at the club, you asked me if you could be with me. You didn’t ask if you could feed from me. For the first time you just wanted to be with me.”

He looked down at her hand on his arm and didn’t dare to breathe. He didn’t need to breathe, but at moments like this, he desperately wanted to. “I did?” He knew he did. And it had been an honest question, without hidden intentions.

“The answer is yes.”

Her hand slid down his arm, and she laced her fingers with his. Tugged at him, and led him inside. And he followed her, mesmerized, like he would follow a glowing moth. She led him into her living room, and after shedding her coat, she sat down beside him and slid her hands into his coat.

“What are you doing?”

“Helping you get rid of that. Make it comfortable.”

He felt like a puppet beneath her hands, and he let her slip his coat off his shoulders, and his suit jacket, and her soft touches made him tingle and tickle, as if she was touching him with sunlight. He didn’t protest when she knelt on the couch and pulled him into her arms, and held him. He had no idea why she did this, but he didn’t want her to stop, not even when the world would end, and fall to pieces around them. She was so warm. And he was so cold. But when she cradled him, and brushed his hair with her fingertips, he felt warmth bloom inside him. He remembered how she had come to his house, when she had been in pain, and how he had cared for her. Now she cared for him. Because he was dying. Her caring felt decidedly less egoistical than his had been, and shame formed a lump in his throat.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“Because you need it.” It was a simple answer, yet one he didn’t understand. And he understood even less when she bent down and kissed him, gentle, like a mother would kiss a child. It was a chaste kiss. A fleeting kiss. A short moment, yet the only moment of his long life that seemed to be worth to be remembered. After she had kissed him, they sat again in silence, and he listened to the steady beat of her heart. And then his own heart stopped when she tilted his head up, made him look at her, and asked, “Would you like to feed from me?”

“Yes. Please.” His voice cracked in his throat, and he was not sure if she even understood his words. But she bent down again to kiss him, and this kiss was nothing like the one before. It was not chaste, not soft, and not gentle. She flooded him with light, with warmth, and it was enough to sate him. But he didn’t object when she started to unbutton his shirt, and kissed every inch of skin she uncovered, right down to the edge of his undershirt. And he didn’t object when she pushed him against the back of the couch and straddled his lap, kissing him wet and hot and everywhere. Her kisses kindled his desire, made him hard, and made his hips twitch beneath her, just as much as they made his jaws ache.

She pulled away, and lifted herself up, so she could fumble with the fly of his pants. He didn’t move beneath her, felt like jelly, spineless, limp, and all he was able to do was holding on to her waist and let her kiss him.

“No knives this time?” he asked, when she freed his cock, and let go of his lips. She giggled, and the sound alone made him buckle. He wanted to be inside her. Wanted her so badly.

“No knives. Help me with the dress?” She lifted her arms, and he pulled the dress over her head. She left his lap for a moment to get rid of the rest of her clothes, and he used the time to do the same. She was a little faster, and when she helped him, tugging impatiently at his clothes, she looked just as hungry as he was. Again and again, she kissed him, and licked over his skin, planted tiny bites on his shoulders, and his chest, and his throat, and he did the same to her, kissing her throat, and her collarbones, and her chest. When he closed his lips around her nipple, she sucked in air, and raked through his hair, and he was sure that her nails left scratch marks on him. The thought made him shudder. He wanted her to mark him. He pulled back a little and waited for her to look at him. When she did, her chest heaving with her heavy breathing, he took her hand and placed it over the scar she had left when she had stabbed him. He had healed quickly, and he wouldn’t die from a stabbing to the heart, but a thin white line on his skin indicated where the wound had been.

“This is yours”, he said, and she swallowed. She didn’t draw back her hand from his heart when he let go of it, and let his hand glide between her legs to find her wet and hot. He dipped into that wetness, and drew it out, circled her clit until she writhed and panted and moved her hips to meet his caresses. He didn’t stop until she came, grabbing his head and pressing his face to her chest. Her climax fueled his hunger for her, his thirst, and he made sure she watched him as he withdrew his fingers from her core and licked them clean. This was his. And her taste filled him with a joy he didn’t remember from this life.

She grabbed his hair, pulled his head back, and kissed him, kissed her juices from his lips, and mounted him. The moment he was inside her, his cock pulsing inside her, wrapped in her wetness, her warmth, he almost came undone. It hit him with a force he had not expected. And when she pressed his face to the crook of her neck, his lips to her skin, he needed a moment to remember his thirst. She winced when his teeth broke her skin, when he started to suck her blood, but he rolled his hips, thrust upwards, and she answered him, groaning, and pressing him so close to her chest that he felt her breath as if it was his own. She crushed him in her embrace, and her blood filled him with her ecstasy, with her lust, with her life. She came undone a second time, and when her inner muscles clenched around him, he tore away his lips from her neck, and his own climax washed over him, drenching his vision in white light. She collapsed on top of him, sank against him, and he closed his arms around her and held her.

“Belle”, he said, and his voice was hoarse, croaky. “You’re my sun.”

She shivered, and pressed her lips to his throat, and to his lips, licking away her blood. “And you are my monster.”

It was not exactly what he wanted, but it was enough for now. “I’m yours”, he said, and she smiled.         

 


	18. Leashed

Belle was glad that it was still winter. In summer, it would have been much more suspicious to wear a scarf. Five days before Christmas, no one should question it, and no one would suspect her to hide anything beneath that scarf, least of all bite marks. But when Ruby stormed into the library, wearing a skin tight dress and an expression that spelled “pissed”, Belle was not so sure anymore. Ruby’s eyes went to the scarf as if it was a snake, and her nails cut like blades through the air, only inches away from Belle’s throat, when she grabbed it.

“Ruby!”

“Why do you need that? Where did you go tonight? You were gone all of a sudden, and I couldn’t find you anymore. Why do you need a scarf?”

Wow. Ruby sounded even more pissed than she looked. “It’s cold”, Belle said, with as much dignity as she could muster. She tried to step back and free herself from Ruby’s claws. But her friend didn’t let go of the knitted scarf and pulled it away from her neck.

“Bullshit. Did you let him bite you?”

“What?” Belle was not sure if Ruby had just said what she thought she had said.

“Did. You. Let. Gold. Bite. You.” Ruby hissed every word out as if it was poisonous.

“How…What…How do you know?” Belle tried to sort out the thoughts that rampaged her mind. Ruby knew. Ruby knew about him. What exactly did Ruby know? And how came…

“Don’t be naïve, Belle. You’re lucky to be alive if you did let him bite you. There are much cleaner ways to draw blood. You could use a needle. Biting is dangerous. There’s always a chance he doesn’t stop, once his teeth are in you.”

“How do you know?”

For the first time, Ruby seemed to actually register what Belle was saying, and she blushed. She let go of the scarf around Belle’s neck as if she had burned herself.

“Um…”

“Did you know from the start? Did you know when I started dating him?”

“Um…” Ruby seemed to choke on her tongue.

“So you did know. And you didn’t think to warn me, when I could have gone blindly to my own slaughter? What kind of friend are you?”

“Well, apparently he didn’t kill you.” Ruby took a step back, and Belle lifted her chin.

“No, apparently he didn’t. But it’s nice to know that my friend was so sure he wouldn’t, that she didn’t think it necessary to warn me of the monster I was about to date. Thank you very much, Ruby. Or, maybe _he_ should thank you for the trust you had in him.”

“Wait, are you mad at me now?”

“Of course I’m mad at you! You let me go out with a killer!” Belle clawed her nails into the book she was holding, to keep herself from throwing it at Ruby.

“Well, it’s not as if he had killed you, isn’t it? So everything’s fine.” Ruby took another step back.

“Ruby. He’s a monster. And it’s not as if he didn’t try to kill me.”

“If he had really tried, you would be dead.” Ruby ducked when Belle threw the book. She looked flabbergasted, but not nearly shocked enough for Belle’s taste. “Look, I know that this is a lot to process, but I signed an agreement not to talk about his…condition. And he would kill me without a second thought if I broke that agreement.”

“Do you even listen to yourself? That doesn’t make it better.”

Ruby retreated even more. “Well, I’d like to go on living, thank you very much. And as you said, he’s a killer.”

Belle stopped in her tracks and stared at Ruby as a new thought hit her. “How is it that you know about him and are still alive? And what do you mean with ‘you could use a needle’? Is he feeding from you? Do you pay the rent in blood?”

“Look, I didn’t want to upset you…I recognized him as a vampire right from the start, and yes, I provide him with my blood, and yes, our deal is part of our rental agreement…”

“How?” Belle heard her mounting despair, heard her voice shaking and was unable to stop it. She was staring into an abyss, and it was staring right back at her, with flashing teeth and yellow eyes. Ruby looked away, back over her shoulder, to the bookshelves, anywhere, just not at Belle.

“I have…a condition myself. Makes it easier for me to spot others.”

“Other what?”

“What do you think, Belle? Monsters. I’m a werewolf.”

Belle’s knees just buckled, and she had no idea how it happened, but suddenly she found herself sitting on the floor, and Ruby was at her side, grabbing her shoulders.

“Hey, beautiful, are you alright?”

Belle stared at Ruby, trying to process that information. Werewolf. She shouldn’t be surprised that in a world where vampires existed, there were other creatures, too. Monsters. She narrowed her eyes.

“Do you know how to kill a vampire?” She was not sure if she still wanted to kill him – after last night, she supposed the answer was no, since she could have just let him starve to death. But she hadn’t. She had fed him back to health, with her blood. And after fucking and feeding, she had held him until it was close to dawn and he had to go. But she knew he would come back. She still was his only source of food.

“I have no clue. Vampires are not very sociable. And they keep the important bits of knowledge close to themselves.” Ruby shrugged.

“There are more?”

“Well, what do you think? Of course there are more. Not in Storybrooke, thank god. One is enough.”

“What other monsters are there in Storybrooke?”

“Believe me, you don’t want to know. But Gold is by far the nastiest, so I guess the rest should be a piece of cake for you.”

Belle snorted. “Lucky me, already having bitten into the very rotten core of the nastiest cake around.”

“How did he taste?”

“Sweet. Like green tea with lemon slices and fresh mint.”

Ruby furrowed her brows, and Belle blushed. It was one of the most disturbing things about Gold, that he tasted so good. So fresh, and alluring. He smelled and tasted like something not quite from this world. “I guess it’s the vampire thing. A trap. He just smells like something his prey adores. So they don’t realize they’re being eaten.” Belle sighed. Somehow it was liberating to talk to Ruby about all these things, and her anger wore slowly off.

“He doesn’t smell like that to me.” Ruby tilted her head, and Belle shifted nervously under her gaze. “Maybe it’s not at all the vampire thing. Maybe he’s just special to you.”

“I don’t think so.” Belle averted her eyes. Ruby was wrong. It had to be a purely chemical reaction. Some kind of pheromones that blew the fuses on her synapses.

“You fell pretty hard for him. And I never saw something like this happen before. He never dated. And you had nothing serious either. Maybe you two are meant for each other.”

“Why would you say that? It’s not as if we had a future.” All that could possibly come out of their relationship was death. Either hers or his.

“I don’t know about that. Life and death are having a pretty successful relationship, and a pretty long at that, too.” Ruby smiled, and Belle wondered for the first time if she really had more teeth than ordinary humans.

“You can’t compare that. And I’m not sure if I want to live in a relationship where one part constantly destroys what the other creates, like Life and Death are doing it…”

“Yes, but it’s a two way road. Life takes what Death destroys and creates new life with it.”

Belle squeezed her eyes shut. “I think I haven’t slept enough for this conversation.”

Ruby snorted. “Neither have I. We should save the allegories for later.”

“I didn’t know you even knew that word.”

Ruby grimaced and got back to her feet, pulling Belle up with her. “I learned a thing or two from you. And Mary Margaret.” She patted down Belle’s dress, but it was more a tentative, soothing gesture than a necessary one. “Coffee?” she asked then, and Belle nodded.

While Ruby was away, picking up coffee to go from Granny’s diner, Belle thought about the night. She had never thought about a future that involved Gold. And how could she? How could anyone? Though she saw changes in him. She saw changes in herself, too. She had never expected to find the strength inside her to endure, to get over the terrible things that had happened to her. She was strong, and tough, and she had not known it. After her initial shock had worn off, she detected something inside her that she never noticed before. A lot of it happened in that one short moment when she had been sure she was going to die. It stripped away all her ridiculous fears. Ripped away the veil that hid her strength from herself.

And part of her was even grateful that he had shown her own strength to her. Even if it was unintentionally. And perhaps, when there were things inside her she had not known about…maybe there were things inside him, too. Things he didn’t know about. She was not sure what had happened, what changed, but something definitely did, and now he was no longer able to feed and kill randomly. Well, at least feeding. He was still very much capable of killing.

The day crept by slowly, stretching almost like eternity from dawn till dusk, and Belle grew restless, nervous. He had not said a word about it, but she was sure he would come again. He had been gentle, had touched her as if he couldn’t believe she was real, and Belle had found herself starving for his touch. And that hunger came back over the day, made her long for him and his touch. But he didn’t come. He didn’t come for four days.

He didn’t come back until Christmas Eve, when Belle sat in her living room, wrapped in a blanket and emotionally wrung out after having to call her father. She hated those social calls. Especially since her father told her again that she should find a husband, someone to support her and make her babies – as if she didn’t have a say in the matter – and how very disappointed he was that she didn’t come home for Christmas, when the whole point of moving across the country had been to be as far away from home as possible. And it was not strictly the truth that she didn’t have the money to make the trip home – she just didn’t want to. And for the first time in her life, she found the strength to actually tell her father. Later she wished she hadn’t. And when there was a knock at the door, she contemplated to just ignore it. To pretend she was not at home. But the knock came again, grinding her already raw nerves, and she finally decided to open. She went to the door, still wrapped into her blanket, and she didn’t need to spy through the fish eye to know who was outside. She recognized the tapping of his cane on the door.

She had waited for him. Four days. And he chose the worst moment to come back, the moment when she was just too raw and worn out to cope with her reaction to him. True, he didn’t know that. So, to be fair, she opened the door and faced him.

“Belle.”

If she ever had had a plan on how to deal with him, or an idea about the nature of their relationship – or doubts that they even had something like a relationship, however twisted and wrong it might be – they were gone the moment she looked at his face. He needed her, and she realized that she needed him. So, instead of talking, of forming nonsensical words, she grabbed his coat and yanked him inside and searched his lips for a reckless kiss, ignoring his cold skin and his helpless confusion, ignoring his sharp teeth grazing her lips. Ignoring her own insecurity. She had waited for too long.

“Belle, what are you doing?” he asked when he managed to tear away from her. Not that Belle made it easy for him. His words, however, woke her out of her frenzy. She took his hand and pulled him with her, back to the couch in the living room, where they settled, facing each other.

“Did you come back to feed?” she asked, and he winced, baring his teeth in a snarl. He was thirsting, she saw it in his eyes, in the way his fangs protruded.

“You’re the one keeping me alive. You tell me. Am I here to feed?”

Strangely, she was not afraid. He was thirsting, and she had the means to keep him alive, just as she had the power to let him die. All the time she had looked for a way to end him, she had already had it in her hands; she was his end. Maybe they were really meant for each other, just as Ruby had said. She had no idea how it happened, or how it was even possible, but somehow along the way, he had become truly hers.

“So…I talked with Ruby. And she said that there are cleaner ways to feed…and that biting is messy and dangerous. That there is a possibility you wouldn’t stop.” She tried to catch his gaze, to lock eyes with him. He didn’t respond at once, instead lifting his fingertips to her jaw and trailing to her chin, touching his thumb fleetingly to her lips.

“And now you are afraid?” he asked, half a smile tugging at his lips.

“No. Not more than before. I mean, I know it’s dangerous. You didn’t stop the night I stabbed you.”

“We both did things we regret that night.”

“Actually, I don’t regret having stabbed you. I might have regretted if I really killed you. But since that didn’t work out…” Belle stared down at her lap. She was kneading her hands, and her knuckles were white. She took a deep breath before looking up again. “What happens to you when I die? Will you be able to feed from others again?”

“I don’t know. As long as you live, my life is yours.”

“So, what if you decide you want to be free again?” There was a real possibility of that. He might come to hate her, resent her for the inexplicable bond that tied him to her. She might not have created it, but she held the leash in her hands nevertheless.

“I have never been free. I might have experienced my new life as liberation from weakness and submission, but it came with other bonds. It chained me to darkness, eternal life and solitude.” He sounded leveled, indifferent.

“Not to mention a murderous thirst for blood.”

“Well, I never regarded that as a drawback. Not until I stopped being able to feed freely.”

“So you don’t regret all the lives you’ve taken?” She was not sure if she even wanted to know the answer. It was enough to look at his face. He answered nevertheless, and Belle wished she had not posed this particular question.

“Not a single one. There are a few I regret not having taken. But I outlived those, too.”

She stared at him, his unmoved features, and her heart ached. It would be best to end him, and he knew that just as well as she did.

“Well, you have to stop killing. Promise me that, and we can be together.”

His face remained blank, bare of emotion – not that she knew if he had any – and she almost expected him to decline, to try his fate and just snap her neck, when he finally blinked, and furrowed his brows.

“I promise”, he said. “As long as you live.”

“That means you can’t kill me, too.” She just wanted to be sure, and the thin smile that pulled his upper lip up and revealed his fangs proved her right.

“I won’t kill you. I promise this, too.”

Belle took a deep breath. She was not sure if she trusted him. If it was even a remotely sane idea to trust him. To even consider trusting him. She trusted him enough not to kill her just now. But maybe someday, when he grew tired of his leash…

“I have to ask one other thing of you”, she said, when she felt as if she could trust her voice enough not to shake. He tilted his head, lifting his eyebrows, but he waited for her to say it. “Never, ever bite me without my permission.”

“I couldn’t if I tried.” There was definitely something like rage just under his cool surface. This part didn’t sit with him, and hadn’t from the start. This part of his bond to her burned him, made him squirm inside and fight it. Belle shuddered, and felt something hot coil at the small of her back. Fear. But she pushed it down, and lifted her chin. Stared him down, until he caved in, averted his eyes and looked down. “I promise”, he said, his voice cracking.

Belle deflated as her breath left her, and only then did she realize that she had held it while waiting for his answer. So, now she had a vampire. Her very own monstrous pet. The thought made her chuckle, but it lasted only for seconds. He was not a pet. And she might not admit it to him, but the thing that had drawn him to her, had drawn her to him as well. She wouldn’t tell him, but he held just as much power over her as she held over him. She didn’t even admit it to herself. But when she leaned over, pressing her lips to his for a kiss, she closed her eyes and allowed herself one tiny glimpse at that thing inside her, the thing that needed him just as much as he needed her. The next moment though, she forgot about it, as he moved with the force of a true predator, pinning her on her back and smothering her with a kiss that betrayed his thirst. He might be thirsting for her blood, but she was just as hungry for his touch. She wriggled, wrapped her legs around him, and cursed silently the layers of clothes between them. Her pajamas – that were his, truly – and his suit, but none of this was a true hindrance to him, or to her, as they scratched each other out of their clothes. She sent buttons of his shirt flying across the room, and wrenched at his belt, while he ripped her out of his pajamas, never leaving her skin with his lips. Belle gasped when he sucked in her skin just beneath her collarbone, and licked over the mark he left on her. And when he made his way down to her belly, sucking and licking, she dug her nails into his flesh, leaving her mark on him. His touches sent her spinning, swallowed her every thought, until she was only want and need. When he hooked his fingers into the waistband of her pajama pants and dragged them down, leaving her for the tiniest moment to get rid of the barrier between them, she tensed, knowing where he was about to go. She knew he wouldn’t bite her without permission, but the memory of the first time flooded her nevertheless. It was as if she still felt the bruise from the first time there, and allowing his teeth to come this near again…

He must have felt the increasing tension, because he lifted his head to find her eyes. “Afraid?” he asked, and Belle barely managed to nod. “Then let me prove myself to you, my sun.”

He dipped his head down, kissed her sex, tenderly, before licking softly over her folds, parting them with his tongue to find her clit, and Belle cried out when he licked over her, again and again, until her hips bucked beneath him, not sure if she wanted him to go on or to stop. She dug her heels into his back, and was not sure if the sounds coming from her were words or just incoherent gasps and moans. She didn’t care. He didn’t stop lapping at her until her world shattered and everything went white for a moment. And even then did he not stop immediately, he just moved his ministrations a little away from her clit and down, sucking at the wetness there. She had to grab his hair to yank him away, and he wriggled his brows when she did so.

“Already enough?” he asked, sliding up to her, and pushing into her. Belle groaned, grabbing his shoulders to get at least a feeling of stability while her world was shaking beneath her. “Did you know, my sun, that your wetness consists out of components of blood? It’s very sating to drink that. Although…” He dipped down his head and licked over her throat, to the side of her neck where her pulse throbbed, and sucking in her skin there for a moment. “…your blood is even better.”

She realized that he wanted to bite her, waited for her to let him, but every one of his thrusts left her more incoherent, unable to form words. His movements grew erratic, his thrusts harder, and when she only moaned, he started to beg, sending shivers over her.

“Please, Belle, let me bite you. Please.”

“No.” She had to gasp the word out, and he closed his eyes, groaning. “I want you to come for me.” She raked though his hair, grabbed him, forced him to look at her, while he was burying himself inside her. “Come for me”, she panted, and he closed his eyes and let go, tensing above her with his climax. He collapsed on top of her, his body no longer cold, but heated from skin on skin contact, heated from her lust as well as his. Belle drank in the moment, tried to memorize every second, every single line on his face, taking it as proof that she was more than just food. That she was indeed his sun, his light.

“Are you sated?” she asked after a while, when he didn’t move, and started to weigh heavy on her. He lifted his head, searching for her eyes. His pupils were huge, making his eyes almost black, and for the first time, she actually understood what he had meant with them betraying his thirst.

Nevertheless, he said “Yes”, and Belle knew that he was lying.

“You don’t have to lie to me. When did you feed the last time? With me?”

“Yes.”

Belle caressed his face, let her fingertips glide over his temples, his cheeks, down his neck, and she felt him shiver. She had said no, and he had respected it. She didn’t know if that was because he had no other choice, because their invisible bond kept him from feeding from her against her will, but right now, she didn’t care. “Where do you want to bite me?” she asked, her voice hoarse and throaty.

He lifted himself up again, and his right hand slipped down, between her legs. His thumb circled the inside of her thigh, close to her crotch. “Right here, darling.”

Belle swallowed. This was so close to the point where he had first bitten her. He stared at her, waiting for her consent, and he was so calm, so sincere, that all her fear left her. “Alright”, she whispered, but she flinched despite her resolve when he shuffled down again, between her legs. He didn’t bite her right away, and she was glad for it. His fingers circled her clit, worked her up again, but it took Belle much more time to relax than before. He kissed her, licked and sucked until she forgot her fear, until she was close again, so blissfully close that she didn’t even notice when his mouth left her to be replaced by his fingertips, and her orgasm drowned out the pain of his teeth breaking her skin, of him sucking her blood. His fingertips left her clit for seconds before coming back and giving her another orgasm, this one almost painful in its forcefulness. When her pleasure ebbed away, he stopped drinking her blood, and Belle felt deep relaxation sweep her away. He crawled up, squeezing himself into the space between her and the back of the couch, and covered them both with the blanket she had wrapped herself in earlier. Belle could hardly keep her eyes open, and she felt him kiss her forehead and her eyelids before he bedded her head on his arm and pulled her close, holding her when she finally fell asleep.      


	19. Dawn

He hated that he had to leave her in the mornings. He hated that he had to crawl back to her when night fell. But when he asked her to come back into his house, she refused. He hated that she had the power to refuse. That she had the power to deny him what he craved. He called her “my sun”, but like the sun, she burnt him. Most of the time, she felt like the soft, distant sun of the Scottish Highlands, the sun he remembered from his other life, but sometimes she felt like the blinding, deadly sun of his life after death. She was gentle and kind, even when he suspected that she hated him secretly. She might mourn him when he died, and even keep him alive, but Gold attributed this more to her generally kind nature than to real sympathy for him.

On the other hand, she might not like him, but she loved to fuck him. She did not always allow him to bite her, and when she didn’t, he always fucked her harder, wanted to take her apart for her denial, but it hardly scathed her. And it amazed him each time anew how much he enjoyed to bury himself inside her. How sweet the release was that he found inside her. How sating her flesh alone was to him.

It worried him, too. It worried him how fixated he was on her. She was the sun his galaxy was turning around, the center of his world, and yet he was sure she still contemplated to end him, each time she opened her door to let him in. He knew with a clarity that pierced him as cold as ice that she would be his undoing. He had never cared about his end, being dead all along, but now, that his life revolved around her, he started to fear his end. He started to fear loss, when he never felt as if having anything to lose at all. How ironic, he thought, that she was the one that held his death in her palms, when she was the one that had truly brought him alive.

He took little souvenirs from her flat with him when he left, trinkets to keep her close even when he had to lie down for the day and bury in complete darkness. He was addicted to her, and secretly, without her knowing, he filled his home with pieces of her. A book she once read, a rose, dried up and dead, a random note she scribbled onto a piece of crumpled paper. One of her panties, soaked with her juices, disappeared into the front pocket of his suit, replacing the silken handkerchief, and he took it home with him, into his darkness, to remember her gasping breath, her trembling limbs, and her heat, most of all, when he had licked her from climax to climax until she begged him to stop. He liked it more than he cared to admit, to make her quiver and shake, to make her tremble with lust, lust for _him_ , he liked it more than he should to see her come undone in his arms and to spill his dead seed in her.

It took him more time than it should have to realize that he was not only fixated, not only addicted, but utterly, hopelessly and most of all ridiculously over the moon for her. The realization hit him like a truck out of nowhere, while she was writhing beneath him and mewing like a cat, her insides clenching around him, hot and wet, pure bliss, and each of her sounds brought him closer to his own little death. She was hot for him, wet for him, moaning for him and gasping _his_ name, and he lusted more after those sounds than after her blood. He wanted to breathe her in, keep her wrapped around him at all times, crawl into her arms, under her skin, and stay there.

There was nothing more devastating than the realization that he was capable of love. And that he indeed did love her. It was this he hated most of all; to feel such agony and yet thirst for it like he thirsted for blood.

The most devastating thing about it all, though, was the knowledge that she could never love him. It was his very nature that had to repel her. His blood-thirsting, killing-for-pleasure nature, the one thing he could never change, not even if he wanted to. He would never be able to be anything else than what he was made to be. And she barely liked him. He didn’t even know why she kept him alive at all. Was it all just a basic need of hers, an itch she needed him to scratch?

He asked her, but she didn’t have an answer for him. Or she just didn’t want to answer him. But she pulled him into her arms and held him, wrapping her warm body around his until he almost felt warm enough to pretend that he, too, was alive. She held him more and more often, as if she sensed his need to feel the warmth she radiated.

The days got longer again, spring approached, and their nights together grew shorter. She seemed relieved, needed the sun to feel healthy, she said. Winter depressed her, with its cold and dark and endless nights. He winced, not having seen the sun for three centuries, but she barely noticed it. She was absorbed in playing with his hair, entwining it with her fingers, bringing strands of it to her nose and smell and kiss it, as if it was something alive. His head rested on her chest, and he couldn’t keep his fingertips from trailing her collarbones, the little hollow between them, every curve and swell of her body. He buried his nose between her breasts and inhaled her scent, and her giggle tickled over his scalp when she kissed the crown of his head. He asked her to let him drink her blood then, and she allowed it. He was not sure about it, but when he sucked her blood from his favorite spot, the juncture of her leg and her crotch, he thought that she had come to like it. She let him drink much more often, even asked him from time to time, and her orgasms were always more powerful when he was drinking from her.

He loved her with every dead cell of his being, and yet he never told her. She had enough power over him, holding his life and his death in her hands.

“Why do you keep me alive?” He asked her again, and as always, she had no answer for him.

“I don’t know. There is something inside me that doesn’t want you to die.”

She didn’t even say that _she_ wanted him alive. He was truly nothing. That day, when dawn came, he kissed her goodbye, drank in her breath and the feeling how her soft lips parted beneath his, memorized her warm skin, and how it warmed his cold skin, prickling like ants, biting and stinging and yet so full of live that he wanted it to never end. He went home, walking the thin line between darkness and dawn, just in time to reach his dark cave before the first ray of sunlight could reach him. Though he did no longer know why he cared.

She held his life and his death, but he was not sure if she even wanted to hold it. To have this responsibility. The only decision left to him was the time of his death. He didn’t have to wait for her to decide that. He could stop feeding and just let it end. Step into the sun and turn to ash.

Free her.

She deserved better than him. She was so full of life, and she deserved someone who could give her more life, could fill her with life, could give her a child, or at least spent the sunlit hours of day with her. Not someone like him, who chipped away a piece of her with every bite he took. Someone who slowly killed her. How could he want her to live for him for the rest of her days, live only so he didn’t die for the next sixty years or so, if they were lucky. She would wither away under his fangs, and leave him to die anyway.

He didn’t go back to her the following night, and the night after that. He had not spent a night without her since Christmas, and it burnt him from inside to stay away from her. She never came to his house, and he never asked her to, after the first few times, knowing that his house was the monument of his cruelty to her, the thing that reminded her more than anything of his otherness. It was the place where he had held her captive, and he didn’t blame her for not wanting to come back.

She sent Ruby, though. Ruby, with her perfectly manicured talons, and her eyebrows shaped like wings, looked him up and down and raised those brows, when she stepped into his house.

“Are you alright? Belle is worried.” Ruby didn’t care if he lived or died, and she didn’t go through any troubles to hide it from him.

“I’m fine. Anything else?” He snapped, and that got Ruby’s attention. Instead of leaving, her mission fulfilled, she stalked into his living room and slumped onto the couch, tapping the place beside her and gesturing for him to sit. It was strange, being so close to her, with her strong scent burning his nostrils, and he kept as much distance as possible. Seeing him squirm made Ruby chuckle, and he nearly jumped when she patted his knee.

“Ok, Vampy, tell me. What’s the matter with you?”

He had clearly lost his air of menace and danger. When he didn’t answer, Ruby took away her hand and shrugged.

“Fine. Don’t tell me. I’m going to tell Belle that you’re sulking, then. Maybe she knows what’s wrong with you.”

“Don’t tell her. Tell her I left. Tell her I’m not coming back.” The decision seemed to have come out of the blue, was suddenly there, but he knew that it had been there almost the same instant he recognized that he was capable to love.

“Why? Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first to encourage Belle to find a good guy, someone who’ll get old with her and isn’t constantly tempted to kill her, but I thought this was all more like a business arrangement…Unless it isn’t.” Suddenly her gaze was sharp, and pierced through him like a scalpel.

“The way Belle told me about this, it sounded as if you two have some kind of exclusive fucking-for-blood-thing going on. Something you both seemed pretty content with. Are you tired of her? Want another menu for a change?”

Gold bristled at her description of his relationship with Belle, but he knew better than to correct her. So he said “Yes”, but he couldn’t bring himself to actually repeat her words to make it sound any truer.

“Wow, you’re even more of an ass than I thought, then. You could at least tell her that you’re through with her. I don’t know what you did, but somehow she likes you. Walking out on her like that is very cowardly.” Ruby rose to her feet and patted invisible crumbs from her skin tight dress.

“I don’t need her anymore, dearie. That’s all. There was no reason to be overly cruel about it.” The lie etched his tongue like acid, but Ruby believed him. When she left, her distaste more than blatant on her face, he couldn’t keep himself from hoping that Belle would rush to him, would chide him for being silly, and tell him she loved him and didn’t care half as much for her live as she cared for him. Of course she didn’t come.

He did no longer care to light his house, when all he felt was darkness. He did no longer care to go outside. He decided to stay in his cave, the place he never showed anyone, his resting place in the basement, and wait for his death. He could just step out into the sun, but apart from not wanting to make a show of his death, he was afraid of the pain. Coming into this dead life had been painful enough, searing, scorching. He didn’t need his true death to be like that. Although starving to death was not painless either, but it was a pain he was able to bear, because he imagined it to stem from the shards of his broken heart cutting through his flesh. He had no idea how long it would take him to rot, though. From time to time, he laughed bitterly at the sorry creature he had become.

He had counted every night he had spent with her – seventy-eight – but now, the nights bled into days and he didn’t know anymore how long he had not seen her. How long he waited for death to finally claim him. He was amazed to find that death knocked politely at his door.

Of course it wasn’t death –not immediately at least – but _her_.

“Hey, sun”, he choked out, overwhelmed by a wave of her scent, overwhelmed by want and need and thirst savaging his insides.

“Hi, son of a bitch.” Her fury had him staggering back, into the hallway, and Belle crossed the threshold, stepped into his home as if she was determined to tear it down. “So you don’t need me any longer? Too bad I know that that’s a lie.”

He tried to remember the number of days and nights that had gone by since he told that lie to Ruby.

“I waited twenty-one days for you to come to your senses. But you’re determined to die, aren’t you?” Belle had counted the days. A warm glow started to warm him from inside. She had counted the days since she had last seen him.

Having her so close wreaked havoc to his determination to die. He was thirsting, and his teeth, his skull, his bones, everything ached and hurt. Her fist shot forward, hit him in the chest, knocked him almost from his feet.

“Too bad that I’m not going to let you die on me. You understood?” She punched him again, oblivious to the fact that even in his weakened state, he could easily overpower her. Kill her.

“Belle, you don’t deserve this. You should have a life. Why should you choose this, a life where you will live to serve me as a meal till your dying day?” He collided with a wall in his back, and sank slowly down to the ground. Belle towered over him, glaring at him.

“Is this you trying to be noble? Dying, so that I can live? Why?”

“I will die anyway some day. Until you came around, my days were endless. You ended my infinity.”

“Why, Rum? Why do you think I want you to leave me? Why do you think I would be happier without you?”

“I will be your undoing.”

“Bullshit. You just hate that you’re not able to kill anymore. That something tied you to me and forces you to ask before feeding. You hate that I’m between you and your free will, your ability to feed and kill at random. You rather die than live as a slave.”

“And you begrudge me that? Besides, there are worse things than being your fucktoy.”

She paled as he thrust her own word back at her. How odd, he thought, that their roles were so completely reversed now. She fell down to her knees at his side, but she didn’t touch him. At least not physically. Her gaze felt as if she was prodding his insides with fish hooks.

“Is that what you think you are?” she asked, her voice cracking in her throat.

“What else could I be to you?”

He remembered the night when she had called him her monster. It still hurt, even more so because he knew how true it was. He could never be more than her monster. She licked her lips, and he longed to kiss her. The longing to kiss her even overpowered his roaring thirst.

“What do you want to be?” It was only a whisper, hoarse and broken, a question he didn’t want to answer, because it meant to expose the wound in his chest that was still new and fresh, an ache where he never even knew to have a place. But her gaze was compelling, was forcing him to tell her.

“I want to be your moon and your stars. I want to be your life, just as you are mine.” He didn’t look at her, couldn’t bear to look at her, at the pity she was bound to feel. Nothing prepared him for what she said.

“But you are. I don’t want to be without you. I don’t want you to die for my sake.”

He wanted to believe her, oh, how he longed for her words to be true. But he knew that it couldn’t be. He dared to lift a hand and cup her cheek with his cold palm. She tilted her head, pressed into his hand.

“Oh Belle. Don’t you see how impossible this is? I will never give you children. You will spend your days alone, and your nights with a monster that slowly kills you. This is not fair, to neither of us. Do you think I want to see you die over the course of fifty years, knowing that I’m the one killing you night after night?”

“Everyone dies. It’s not your doing when I get old and die. And it’s truly egoistical of you that you want to die and leave me alone just so that you don’t suffer. _That’s_ not fair.” She leaned closer, as if she could convince him with the sheer power of her stare, as if she could breathe sense into him, overpower him with her presence, with her scent and the sweet throbbing of her pulse so close. He had thirsted for so long that he had difficulties to tear away his senses from the beat of her heart, from the blood coursing through her veins. He would never be able to stop if he bit her now. His hand slipped from her cheek down to her throat, and her heart rate picked up pace.

“One of us is going to die tonight if you stay, darling. Is it this you want?” To be true, if she was to die, he wouldn’t live to see another night either.

“What do you mean?” Her eyes were huge in her pale face, and a smile crept over his face.

“I won’t be able to stop if I open that vein.” He rubbed his thumb over her pulse at the side of her throat, and she swallowed. “But if I don’t feed…well, maybe I won’t die tonight. That means, if anyone dies, it’s you.” He was sure to scare her away with that. Belle loved life, she loved living. She wouldn’t stay to be slaughtered.

“You’re lying”, she whispered, and a hissing laugh escaped him.

“Am I? Do you want to take the chance that I am not, maybe?”

“Yes.”

He shoved her away. His push sent her falling on her bottom, and a muffled “oomph” escaped her. He had to keep himself from helping her up again, from asking if she was ok. He had truly become a puppy, and he wished he could reach inside his soul and rip that part of him away. He never asked for it.

Belle struggled back to her feet, and wiped her palms on her skirt, over her thighs. “Ok, I won’t force you.” She extended her hand, and Gold stared at it, fighting the urge to lick the salt and the sweat from her palm like a real dog.

“What are you doing?” he asked instead, cursing his voice for sounding like a sick crow.

“Helping you up, so I can put you onto your couch and watch you die. I want to be sure you’re really gone and not just pretending so you can sneak out of your promise. No kills as long as I live, remember?”

He snarled, but she didn’t even flinch, and sure as hell didn’t pull back her hand. He had ceased to be the least bit scary. Ignoring her outstretched hand, he scrambled back to his feet, and dragged himself into the living room. He was nauseous, his insides roiling, and her scent made it all only worse. At the edges of his mind, his thirst started to convince him that it wouldn’t mean his end to kill her. She would be dead, but he would be better, restored to full health – and heartless again – and ready to move on, freed from his leash. And she had come to him. She was offering her life, wasn’t she? It was as good as permission to kill her. Suck her dry. He wouldn’t be able to make it worth her while, though. It would be a simple kill, nothing else. He was already too weak to bother with foreplay. He would tear open that vein and drink, and she would scream and trash around in pain until she became too weak to resist. Until her life was his. He tasted bile at the back of his throat.

She placed herself on the armchair opposite the couch, _his_ armchair, and left him no choice but to fall onto the couch.

“Isn’t there a faster, less painful way for you to die?” she asked. Always curious.

“Faster, yes, less painless, no. I don’t really care for the pain, but the show of me stepping into the sun would be spectacular, and I’d like to avoid that.”

“How did you become a vampire?”

She had never asked before, and Gold wondered if this was just a tactic to keep him talking and distract him. Probably. But there was no harm in telling her.

“I think it was kind of an accident. It happened while a large part of my Clan was slaughtered by Campbells. There is a saying in Scotland now, _never trust a Campbell_. It has its origin in the night I died. It’s called a massacre nowadays, though all in all, only 38 men and 40 women died in its wake. Some of us escaped. I didn’t. And among those who caught me was one like me. The men having me in their claws didn’t really want me to become what I am now, they just wanted to keep me from dying, so they could torture me a little longer.. I guess the vampire who did it was fairly new himself, or he would have known what he did when he fed me his blood to restore my health. It failed, though, I was already broken beyond repair. I died with his blood in my system, which was rather unfortunate for them. They were a group of nasty men, so I did the world actually a favor by ridding it of them.”

Belle stared at him, horrified, and a thin smile tugged at his lips. No, that wasn’t a pretty story.

“Oh, you poor thing”, she said, and he choked, and started coughing violently.

“What?” he managed, although his throat felt as if someone was strangling him. He told her about his very first kills – gruesome ones at that – and she…was she really feeling sorry for him?

“Were you all alone then, without anyone to help you with the transition?”

“Don’t make the mistake to feel sorry for me, dearie. I welcomed that change. I welcomed the strength, and the thirst, and I welcomed the taste of blood to wash away the dirt, and the excrements they had made me eat. I savored each drop of their blood and each scream from their lips as I ripped them limb from limb.”

She paled, and he could see her tremble. Finally he had shocked her with his true nature, with his cruelty.

“They did that to you?” she asked, her voice thin and breathless, and he could have screamed in frustration. He wanted her to see how monstrous he was, and all she saw was his wretchedness.

“Did you not listen to what I just told you?”

“I did.” She straightened in his armchair, and he was not sure what exactly she was doing when she skidded forward, and patted her knee. “Come here.”

“I’m not a dog. Least of all a lap dog.”

She frowned, and he almost flinched under her stern gaze. “I know you’re not a dog. But I want you to come here.”

He stared at her, and she returned his gaze unwavering. At last he dragged himself from the couch and over to her. Unsure what she wanted him to do next, he shifted from one foot to the other, wriggling his fingers at his side. Belle smiled up to him. And then, taking his hand, she parted her knees and pulled him down between them. He knelt down, tentative, and very aware of how close he was to her. She placed his hand on her knee and guided him to push up the seam of her skirt.

“What are you doing?” The crow in his throat just died, leaving his voice almost too hoarse to speak.

“Do you remember when I came to you, broken and hurting, and you told me that there are other ways to feel pain, to feel alive?”

“Yes.” How could he forget? He washed her feet and fed from her knee, making it look as if he wanted to help her, when in truth he just wanted to taste her blood, make her his, have her.

“You lied to me. I don’t need pain to feel alive. Do you know what made me feel really alive?”

He shook his head. His hand slipped a little farther up her thigh, under her skirt, and he couldn’t keep his nails from digging into her flesh. She cupped his cheek with her other hand, stroking her thumb over his lips.

“I felt never more alive as when I loved. I don’t want you to die, because I don’t want to feel that wretched emptiness again. I don’t want to hurt. I don’t want to feel black and burnt inside. I want you to live, because I want to love you.”

“That is a very egoistical reason”, he whispered.

“Just as egoistical as your reason for wanting to die. So now, bent down. I want you to feed.” She parted her knees even wider, and guided his hand back to the spot on the inside of her knee, where he had bitten her when she came to him for the first time.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”

“You will. Remember, you can’t feed from me when I don’t let you.”

He swallowed. His resolve to stop feeding, to rot and die, vanished, drowned in the need to taste her, to bite her, to obey her. She wanted him to live. He couldn’t deny her that. He bent down, licked over the spot, kissed and nibbled at her skin, but when he wanted to slip his hand between her legs, wriggle his fingers into her panties, she clasped his wrist and stopped him.

“I want to be able to tell you when it’s enough. I don’t want to die by accident.”

“It’s going to hurt.”

“So be it. You can make up for it afterwards.”

He didn’t discuss it any further. She had made up her mind, so he would do as she said. Her leg twitched when he buried his teeth in her, broke her skin and sucked the blood from her wound. Her taste flooded him, drowned him with the taste of honey and oranges and plums, with life and air, and her blood pulsed through him in the cadence of her heartbeat. There was a different quality to it now, something that hadn’t been there before. Something that made him gulp down every drop in ecstasy, suck in her blood like a drowning man sucked in his last breath. It was her love that made her blood taste like life itself. He never wanted to stop drinking it in.

She started to tremble, to groan, and he tasted her pain, felt her thighs cramp under his palms, and he dug his nails deeper into her flesh, sucked harder. She sank back into the armchair, shaking violently, but she didn’t tell him to stop, so he didn’t. Her hand found his on her thigh, and she squeezed it.

“Enough.”

He nearly overheard her, her whisper drowned out by the thrumming of her blood in his veins, but some part of him registered it, and her blood turned foul on his tongue. He tore away from her, staring at the blood trickling down her leg. Belle was panting heavily, and slowly, like silk, boneless, slid out of the armchair and to the floor, into his arms. She pulled down his head and kissed her blood from his lips.

“See? You didn’t kill me.”

He pulled her down to the floor, stretched her out on his Persian rug, and started to peel her out of her clothes. Unbuttoned her blouse, and gently pulled down her skirt and her panties, until she was bare, naked. He could smell her, could smell that she was already wet for him, and it fueled his own desire. Her eyes didn’t leave him when he stripped for her, cast off his clothes just as slow as he had undressed her.

“You’re reckless”, he rasped, stunned not only by her presence, but by her acceptance of him. She didn’t want him to leave her. She wanted him. He was her moon, and her stars, the night to her sun. The knowledge felt strange, settled like a fuzzy ball in the pit of his stomach and tickled him from inside.

He didn’t bother with foreplay. He wanted to be inside of her, and she was ready. Her wetness welcomed him when he spread her legs and entered her, and he placed one of her knees on his shoulder to bury himself even deeper inside her. He moved slow, and her eyes never left his, bound by something almost magnetic. This was not him giving her pleasure in exchange for her blood. It was him, taking her, and it was him giving himself. It was her taking him. He rocked against her, gently, and felt her insides melt around him in heat, and her muscles clenching around him with each slow thrust, until she climaxed with a soft moan, a whispering sigh that answered his own groan when he spilled himself in her. He bent down, kissed her, kissed the smile lingering at the corner of her lips, and kissed her eyelids and her brows and licked away her tears.

“You’re my sun”, he said, hopeful, and “You’re my moon” she answered.     

 

END


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